UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
AT  LOS  ANGELES 


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International  €buratian  Series 

EDITED   BT 

WILLIAM  T.  HARRIS,  A.M.,  LL.  D. 


Volume  LVIII 


5  3  4  6      2 


INTERNATIONAL  EDUCATION  SERIES 


EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

IN  THE 

KINDERGARTEN 


BY 

SUSAN    E.    BLOW 

ACTHOR  OF  "  SYMBOLIC  KDUCATION,"  "  MOTTOES  AND  COMMENTARIES 
OF  FROEBEL'S  MOTHER  PLAY,"  "LETTERS  TO  A  MOTHER,"  ETC. 


NEW    YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

1909 


COFTKISHT,    1908,   BT 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY 


PkbltsheA  ^u'ly;  1909 ' 


7  3  27 


/ 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE 


Some  readers  of  this  book  may  be  surprised  to 
see  how  conflicting  world-views  masquerade  not  only 
in  popular  literature  and  in  semi-philosophical  writ- 
ings, but  also  in  methods  of  instruction  in  the 
schools,  and,  above  all,  even  in  the  programmes  of 
the  kindergarten !  This  certainly  ought  to  encour- 
age us  to  look  again  at  the  claims  made  for  the 
educational  creed  of  Froebel,  which  lays  so  much 
emphasis  on  the  child's  original  self-activity.  In 
fact,  this  book  should  set  in  a  new  light  FroebePs 
place  as  the  great  educational  reformer  for  the  pe- 
riod of  infancy. 

While  self-activity  itself  is  an  inspiration  to  the 
disciples  of  Froebel,  it  is  a  stone  of  stumbling  to 
many  educators  who  have  adopted  with  enthusiasm 
the  doctrine  of  evolution.  They  have  understood 
evolution  as  a  blind  impulse  given  by  nature  to  de- 
velop or  unfold — an  impulse  given  not  only  to  plants 
and  animals,  but  also  to  chemical  elements,  planets 
and  suns,  and  even  to  comets  and  nebulae. 

It  is  admitted,  however,  that  the  evolution  below 
the  stage  of  life  consists  in  fitting  inorganic  sub- 
stances for  the  needs  of  organic  life.  Arrived  at 
life,  the  development  assumes  the  form  of  self -activ- 
ity, and  students  of  evolution  ought  to  look  at  and 


vi  EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

recognize  in  all  its  shapes  this  new  form  of  exist- 
ence. Mechanic  shapes  are  the  effect  of  external  col- 
lisions or  relations  to  outside  bodies.  But  life  is 
the  manifestation  of  a  power  to  react  on  the  environ- 
ment and  modify  it  for  its  own  purposesj 

Life  can  perform  by  its  self-activity  two  kinds  of 
adjustments.  It  can  adjust  itself  to  its  environment ; 
it  can  modify  its_  environment  so  as  to  adjust  that 
external  condition  to  its  own  needs  and  purposes. 

Evolution  in  nature,  in  fact,  points  toward  the 
assumption  of  a  transcendental  power  of  self-deter- 
mination on  the  part  of  plants,  animals,  and  men, 
in  so  far  as  progress  or  development  is  due  to  efforts 
of  animals  or  plants  or  men  to  adapt  themselves  to 
their  environment,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  to  adapt 

.     the  elements  of  their  environment  to  their  own  needs. 

^  Wherever  life  exists  there  is  a  transcendental  power 
of  self-determination.  Kant  used  this  word  tran- 
scendental to  describe  freedom  as  something  which 
gets  aside  the  links  of  causation  in  its  environment 
and  sets  up  in  their  stead  its  own  causal  activity. 
The  plant  overcomes  inorganic  matter  and  its  caus- 
ality and  assimilates  or  digests  it,  making  it  into 
vegetable  cells  having  the  same  idiosyncrasy  as  itself 
— the  oak,  for  example,  making  the  soil  and  nitric 
acid,  carbonic  acid,  and  other  elements,  into  the  cells 
of  oak  leaves  and  oak  wood  and  acorns.  The  plant 
thus  sums  itself  up  at  the  end  of  its  process  by  be- 
ginning (in  its  seeds)  a  series  of  new  individuals  of 
the  same  species,  each  one  capable  of  interrupting 
the  mechanical  chain  of  causality  in  the  external 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE  vii 

order  of  nature,  and  substituting  for  it  its  own 
causality,  possessing  more  or  less  individuality. 

The  animal  has  much  more  of  this  individuality 
than  the  plant,  for  it  possesses  not  only  assimilation 
(or  digestion),  but  also  feeling  and  locomotion. 

The  self -determining  power  of  the  animal  goes  on 
to  build  for  itself  organs  of  tasting,  smelling,  hearing, 
and  seeing.     This  makes  its  evolution. 

Even  the  plant  seizes  from  its  environment  what  is 
suitable  and  makes  it  into  tissue  wherewith  to  form 
its  organs  and  its  structure.  The  animal  increases 
its  apparatus  for  seizing  and  appropriating  its  envi- 
ronment, and  constructs  new  organs  or  instruments 
not  only  for  assimilation  or  nourishment,  but  also 
for  locomotion  and  sensation.  These  are  progressive 
forms  of  self-activity — manifestations  of  a  rudimen- 
tary will-power  building  for  itself  a  means  of  oper- 
ating upon  the  external  world. 

Underneath  all  manifestations  of  life  we  perceive 
action  according  to  purpose  or  design. 

If  the  living  being  is  conscious  of  these  purposes  or 
designs  they  become  motives. 

Motives  are  higher,  and  more  complete  manifesta- 
tions of  self-activity — in  fact,  they  indicate  the  arrival 
at  freedom  proper. 

The  motive  contains  in  it  a  recognition  of  an  ex- 
ternal environment  not  in  harmony  with  the  self,  and 
also  a  recognition  of  a  possible  action  of  its  own 
which  may  modify  that  external  existence  and  bring 
it  into  harmony  with  the  self.  For  example,  I  may 
see  an  apple;  as  a  mere  existence  it  is  not,  and  can- 


Vlll  EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

not  as  such  be,  food.  I  possess  appetite,  but  only  by 
the  action  of  devouring  the  apple  may  I  convert  the 
apple  into  food.  The  motive  is  the  concept  of  its  use 
to  me,  forced  on  the  apple — ^the  apple  being  destroyed 
in  the  realization  of  my  motive.  I  made  the  motive 
by  thinking  away  the  reality  of  the  apple  and  sub- 
stituting for  it  the  thought  of  the  reality  of  my  food. 
Then  I  make  this  thought-motive  a  reality  by  a  sec- 
ond act  of  my  will,  by  eating  the  apple.  There  is, 
therefore,  a  twofold  act  of  the  self,  first  I  form  a 
motive  in  my  mind  and  secondly  I  realize  that 
motive. 

Motives  therefore  unfold  and  make  explicit  my 
freedom,  and  are  not,  as  Victor  Cousin  taught,  the 
mediation  which  sets  aside  my  freedom.  He  sup- 
posed that  an  act  could  not  be  perfectly  spontaneous 
and  free  unless  it  were  an  act  done  before  the  mind 
had  time  to  formulate  its  motives.  By  this  theory 
he  hoped  to  answer  the  fatalists  who  held  that  the 
will  must  be  necessitated  by  the  strongest  motive. 
There  can  be  "no  freedom,  but  only  a  constraint 
from  motives — the  strongest  of  the  motives  constrains 
the  will."  But  all  this  mistake  arose  through  in- 
correct analysis — the  fatalist  supposed  that  the  per- 
ception of  the  external  reality  (the  apple,  for  ex- 
ample) was  itself  a  motive,  whereas  it  could  not 
become  a  motive  until  the  mind  had  combined  it 
with  another  percept,  namely,  its  hungry  self;  and 
by  this  combination  of  its  hunger  with  the  object  it 
did  not  as  yet  think  a  motive — it  did  not  complete 
the  thought  of  a  motive  until  it  added  the  idea  of 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE  ix 

the  seizure  and  destruction  performed  on  the  apple 
by  the  act  of  eating  it.  Take  away  the  thought  of 
the  annulment  of  the  apple's  reality,  and  you  take 
away  the  thought  of  using  it  as  food. 

The  motive  always  has  in  it  the  thought  of  the 
annulment  of  a  reality  or  at  least  of  some  change 
of  a  real  condition.  And,  whereas  the  determinist 
supposes  himself  to  have  an  immediate  reality  in  a* 
motive,  his  motive  is  only  a  thought  relative  to  the 
annulment  of  the  objective  reality  (the  apple,  e.  g.) 
before  him. 

On  the  plane  of  human  life  the  apparatus  for 
knowing  nature  is  very  much  extended,  and  so  is  the 
apparatus  for  moving  and  combining  objects  of  na- 
ture and  transforming  and  adapting  them  for  the 
uses  of  man.  But  even  the  animal,  even  the  plant 
has  self-activity.  The  animal  has  motives  also,  and 
even  if  they  are  not  of  a  high  order,  they  manifest  as 
far  as  they  go  his  ability  to  annul  the  chain  of 
external  causality  first  in  thought  and  secondly  in  act. 

There  is  one  great  step  which  differences  man  from 
the  animals;  to  man  objects  are  not  seen  as  isolated 
particulars,  but  are  seen  as  individuals  of  species 
and  as  existing  in  a  causal  relation  to  other  objects 
in  the  world. 

This  gives  a  greatly  enlarged  scope  for  the  creation 
of  instruments  for  the  use  of  the  will  in  acting  upon 
nature.  Man  as  a  language-using  animal,  sees  each 
object  as  a  specimen  of  a  class  of  objects,  and  in  seeing 
it  thus  he  sees,  as  it  were,  a  halo  of  possibility  or  po- 
tentiality about  each  object.     Each  object  is  as  it  is, 


X  EDITOR'S  PREFACE 

but  it  might  have  been  different  in  this  or  that  respect 
because  of  some  external  cause,  or  because  of  some 
defect  in  the  object's  reaction  if  it  is  a  living  being. 

Moreover,  each  object  is  looked  at  by  the  human 
self  as  possessing  the  capacity  of  being  so  modified 
by  the  action  of  man  as  to  ^ke  it  out  of  its  natural 
functions  and  impose  uporB;  a  function  of  service 
for  man.  The  water  brookBiay  be  converted  into  a 
pond  and  its  force  appliedlthrough  a  water  wheel 
and  other  machinery  to  aid  nyn  in  the  transformation 
of  nature. 

This  activity  of  thought  which  sees  the  possible 
in  the  real  is  the  great  self-activity  which  distin- 
guishes humanity. 

In  philosophy,  for  instance,  man  can  see  these 
potentialities  as  presuppositions.  Through  presup- 
positions man  can  see  the  evidence  of  a  Divine  Being, 
even  in  brute,  inanimate,  matter.  He  can  see  the  nec- 
essary immortality  of  thinking  beings  like  himself. 

He  can  by  presuppositions  perceive  the  grand  pur- 
pose of  all  nature  as  an  evolution — he  can  recognize 
time  and  space  as  a  cradle  for  the  development  of 
individualities  and  their  ascent  into  immortal  be- 
ings. 

All  philosophy,  science,  literature,  and  art,  and  es- 
pecially religion,  become  possible  to  this  human  being, 
who  can  discern  not  only  what  he  is,  but  read  in  the 
actual  being  of  his  environment  all  of  its  potentialities 
—present,  past,  and  future.  ^    ^   Harris. 

Washington,  D.  C.,  June  5,  1908. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 


Within  the  past  thBty  years  all  grades  of  edu- 
cation from  the  kindeitarten  to  the  university  have 
been  more  or  less  influenced  by  the  scientific  doc- 
trine of  relativity  as  the  controlling  principle  of 
the  universe;  by  the  working  hypothesis  of  physio- 
logical psychology  that  "  mental  action  may  be  uni- 
formly and  absolutely  a  function  of  brain  action/' 
and  by  the  undue  ascendancy  of  industrial  aims 
over  the  mind  of  the  American  people. 

The  primary  object  of  this  book  is  to  trace  the 
results  of  these  influences  upon  the  kindergarten. 
The  hope  with  which  it  has  been  written  is  that 
portrayal  of  their  results  within  one  small  province 
of  education  may  help  to  direct  attention  to  the 
disasters  they  have  caused  and  are  causing  in  all 
provinces  of  education. 

The  plan  of  the  book  is  a  very  simple  one.  Each 
of  the  above-mentioned  modes  of  thought  is  con- 
cretely presented  in  the  typical  example  of  a  kinder- 
garten programme.  Each  programme  is  discussed 
with  the  purpose  of  throwing  its  creative  principle 
into  clear  relief.  Finally,  some  suggestion  is  given 
of  the  influence  of  this  principle  in  other  spheres 
of  life  and  thought. 


xn  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

In  addition  to  its  general  aim  this  book  has  a 
secondary  and  more  specific  purpose.  It  endeavors 
to  set  forth  the  theories  of  Froebel  with  regard  to 
the  education  of  little  children. 

The  educational  creed  of  Froebel  contains  four 
reciprocally  dependent  articles.^ik  The  first  is  that 
man  is  a  self-creative  being;  the  second,  that  in  vir- 
tue of  this  fact  education  shall  encourage  self- 
expression;  the  third,  that  encouragement  shall  be 
given  only  to  those  modes  of  self-expression  which 
are  related  to  the  values  of  human  life;  the  fourth, 
that  all  great  human  values  are  revelations  of  the 
aboriginal  self-determining  energy  which  achieves 
its  own  ideal  form  in  self -consciousness.  This  final 
article  does  not  deny  the  influence  of  man's  biologic 
and  historic  heredity,  nor  does  it  deny  the  influence 
of  either  his  physical  or  his  social  environment.  It 
does,  however,  insist  both  upon  the  priority  and  the 
primacy  of  self-determination. 

The  creators  of  concentric  programmes  either  re- 
ject or  ignore  all  these  articles  of  the  Froebelian 
creed.  The  creators  of  free-play  programmes  accept 
the  first  and  second,  but  either  reject  or  ignore  the 
third  and  fourth.  The  creators  of  industrial  pro- 
grammes accept  the  first  three,  but  deny  or  ignore 
the  fourth,  and  thereby  are  betrayed  into  practical 
methods  which  violate  the  articles  they  theoretically 
affirm. 

It  is  due  to  readers  of  this  book  that  I  should 
explain  my  reason  for  devoting  its  final  chapter  to 
a  discussion  of  different  philosophic  world-views. 


AUTHOR'S  PREFACE  xiii 

The  conflicting  practice  of  kindergartners  implies 
divergent  conceptions  of  education.  These  diver- 
gent conceptions  of  education  are  not  mere  eddies 
in  the  stream  of  thought,  but  correspond  with  dif- 
ferent directions  of  its  main  current.  In  its  jubi- 
lant sense  of  conformity  with  nature,  and  in  its 
swift  surrender  to  fatal  impulse,  the  free-play  kin- 
dergarten repeats  in  its  tiny  circle  the  self-destruc- 
tive sweep  of  naturalism.  In  its  tendency  to  con- 
ceive the  child  as  shaped  and  fashioned  by  the 
historic  process;  in  its  reaction  from  intellectualism 
to  an  exaggerated  voluntarism,  and  in  its  practical 
emphasis  upon  functional  values,  the  industrial 
kindergarten  betrays  the  influence  of  pragmatism. 
In  its  conception  of  the  child,  its  symbolism  and 
its  freightage  of  free  activity  with  ideal  values,  the 
Froebelian  kindergarten  reveals  a  lineage  from  the 
philosophy  of  idealism.  A  study  of  educational 
issues  in  the  kindergarten  which  should  omit  con- 
sideration of  these  three  world-views  would  there- 
fore dismiss  its  subject  without  any  final  explana- 
tion.^ 

In  the  discussion  of  pragmatism  I  have  restricted 
myself  to  that  form  of  the  doctrine  which  has  af- 
fected the  practice  of  the  kindergarten. 

In  my  presentation  of  the  philosophy  which  un- 
derlies the  kindergarten  I  do  not  claim  to  have 
repeated  exactly  the  conscious  thought  of  its  founder. 

•  The  connection  of  the  concentric  programme  with  Her- 
bart's  "World  View"  is  shown  in  chapter  V.  Herbart's 
"  World  View  "  never  obtained  general  currency. 


xiv  AUTHOR'S  PREFACE 

Froebel  was  a  religious  mystic.  His  power  of  in- 
tuitive divination  far  exceeded  his  power  of  philo- 
sophic statement.  I  believe  that  the  philosophy  of 
idealism  as  presented  in  the  final  chapter  of  this 
book  is  implied  in  Froebel's  mystic  conception  of 
the  dogma  of  the  Trinity  and  in  his  own  conception 
of  man  as  Gliedganzes.  Furthermore,  I  hold  that 
this  is  the  only  philosophy  which  adequately  inter- 
prets his  educational  procedure. 

My  grateful  acknowledgments  are  due  to  Prof. 
Charles  Hubbard  Judd,  of  Yale  University,  for  his 
kindness  in  explaining  to  me  an  important  question 
of  genetic  psychology,  and  to  Prof.  John  Angus 
MacVannel,  of  Columbia  University,  for  help  re- 
ceived from  his  monograph  on  "  The  Educational 
Theories  of  Herbart  and  Froebel,"  for  his  courtesy 
in  reading  the  proof  of  this  book,  and  for  valuable 
advice. 

Susan  E.  Bu>w. 

Cazenovia,  N.  Y.,  June  13,  1908. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


PAGB 


dlR.PTOR  I 

nui. 

The  Concentric  Programme      .       .       .'^^^\       .       1-33 

J£^g^,^indergarten    embodies    great    educatioiiiil    ideals 
— Results  of  an  inadequate  grasp  of  these  ideals — 
Three  departures  from  the  Froebelian  ideal — Aim 
of  the  book,  1.     A  concentric  programme,  2-7.     Dis- 
cussion of  concentric  programme — Four  defects  in- 
herent in  its  principle:    First,  assumed  priority  of 
conscious  thought;  second,  imposition  of  a  thought- 
mass;  third,  sacrifice  of  specific  values;  fourth,  sub- 
stitution of  arbitrary  connections  for  causal  ties, 
8-10.     Results   of   concentric    programmes    in    the 
kindergarten,     10.     Pedigree     of     concentric     pro- 
«^       gramme,  11-13.  Concentric  programmes  in  the  school, 
\.       13-19.     The  principle  of  concentration — Its  defect 
*       the   assumption    that    mutually    repellent   subjects 
'        may  be  fused — Contrast  of  scientific  and  humane 
*"         studies — Scientific  studies  should  be  so  presented  as 
'        to   lead   to   discovery  of   causes — Humane  studies 
should  be  so  presented  as  to  lead  to  a  knowledge  of 
human  nature — Special  sciences  and  special  groups 
of  the  humane  studies  demand  different  methods — 
Values  of  mathematics,  physics,  botany,  zoology, 
literature,   art,   and   history — Methods   adapted   to 
awaken  consciousness  of  these  values,  19-29.     Prin- 
ciple of  concentration  rooted  in  doctrine  of  apper- 
ception as  explained  by  Herbart — ^Two  defects  in  this 
explanation:   First,  primacy  of  intellect  over  feeling 
and  will;  second,  doctrine  that  presentations  are  the 

XV 


XVI  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAQS 

elements  of  mental  life — Educational  atomism — Its 
two  forms:  First,  emphasis  upon  sensations  as 
original  elements  of  mind;  second,  emphasis  upon 
associative  processes — Rousseau,  Pestalozzi  and  Her- 
bart  as  atomic  educators,  29-32.  Froebel  discards 
both  forms  of  educational  atomism,  33. 

'K^\         CHAPTER   II 
The  Froebe%^  Antithesis  or  Contrast  .       .      33-75 

Froebel's  vortical  education  versus  the  concentric  educa- 
tion of  some  Herbartians — Thought  -  masses  and 
typical  facts — Facts  as  relative  and  absolute  syn- 
theses— Definition  of  a  typical  fact — It  must  suggest 
a  creative  energy,  33-35.  Illustrations  of  the  power 
of  typical  facts,  35-37.  Typical  facts  appeal  to  im- 
agination— Through  their  use  Froebel  captures  the 
realm  of  phantasy,  37.  Contrast  between  the  psy- 
chology of  the  concentric  programme  and  the  psy- 
chology of  the  kindergarten  r  the  former  derives 
interest,  desire,  volition,  from  conscious  thought;  the 
latter  begins  with  interest  and  desire  which  express 
and  define  themselves  in  deeds,  38.  The  point  of 
departure  for  kindergarten  education,  typical  acts — 
These  typical  acts  include  play  with  typical  objects 
and  representation  of  typical  characters,  relations, 
and  processes,  39.  Arguments  against  kindergarten 
gifts — Discussion  of  these  arguments,  39—42.  Scien- 
tific value  of  play  with  archetypal  forms,  that  it 
leads  from  effects  to  causes,  42,  43.  Value  of  play 
with  archetypal  forms  as  related  to  art:  First,  leads 
to  accurate  seizure  of  concrete  forms;  second,  leads 
to  appreciation  of  rhythm,  measure,  and  proportion, 
43-52.  Typical  processes — Value  of  dividing  and 
reconstructing  wholes:  value  of  sequences;  value  of 
evolutionary  exercises  mediating  given  antitheses, 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  XVll 

PAOS 

52-56.  Relation  of  these  values  to  Froebel's  world- 
view,  56-59.  Froebel's  belief  that  all  values  are 
indigenous  to  the  mind,  59-61.  Kindergarten  gifts 
and  occupations  contrasted  with  kindergarten  games: 
the  former  relate  to  arts  and  sciences ;  the  latter  pre- 
pare for  the  humanities,  61,  62.  What  is  meant  by 
the  ideal — A  cosmic  community  as  both  archetype 
and  goal  of  creation — Relationship  of  human  institu- 
tions to  this  goal — Educational  function  of  the 
several  institutions,  63-66.  Typical  characters,  66- 
68.  Typical  relationships,  68,  69.  Mistaken  criti- 
cisms of  the  kindergarten,  69,  70.  Typical  processes, 
70,  71.  Value  of  types  as  concrete  embodiments  of 
universal  ideals,  72,  73.  The  concentric  programme 
and  its  Froebelian  antithesis  or  contrast,  73-75. 

CHAPTER  III 

The  Methodical  Treatment  of  Literature       .       76-92 

Insistence  upon  value  of  classic  stories  the  meritorious 
deed  of  Herbartian  educators — ^This  deed  undone  by 
using  stories  as  cores  of  concentration  and  by  sub- 
jecting them  to  methodical  treatment,  76.  Meth- 
odical treatment  illustrated,  76-80.  Criticism  of 
methodical  treatment :  First,  it  kills  interest  in  story; 
second,  neutraUzes  influence  of  story;  third,  distracts 
attention  from  story;  fourth,  antagonizes  children 
by  calling  for  repetition  of  story;  fifth,  introduces 
irrelevant  information;  sixth,  makes  false  appeal 
to  moral  sense,  80,  81.  Three  psychologic  fallacies 
involved  in  the  methodical  treatment  of  literature: 
First,  children  should  not  define  the  feelings  stirred 
by  presentation  of  typical  characters,  collisions,  and 
catastrophes;  second,  new  facts  do  not  seize  upon 
the  mind  with  greater  force  when  they  readily  fuse 
with  familiar  ideas;  third,  children  should  not  be 
2 


XVUl  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAQE 

made  aware  of  all  that  is  going  on  in  their  minds, 
81-85.  The  methodical  treatment  of  literature  an 
outcome  of  Herbart's  false  analysis  of  mind — ^The 
soul  is  not  "  a  simple  wherein  nothing  exists  but  ideas, 
their  relations  and  interactions" — Mind  is  an  energy 
one  and  indivisible;  feeling,  willing,  and  knowing 
special  modifications  of  this  energy,  86.  The  method- 
ical treatment  of  stories  attacks  the  spirit  of  litera- 
ture by  interpreting  its  typical  characters  and 
situations — Literature  knows  no  moral  imperatives 
— Its  appeal  is  not  to  understanding  but  to  imagina- 
tion, 87.  Methodical  treatment  of  literature  in  the 
kindergarten,  88-90.  Summary  of  criticisms  on 
concentric  programme  and  methodical  treatment  of 
literature,  91,  92. 

CHAFfER   IV 
Literature  and  Life 93-124 

Nursery  rhymes  portray  elementary  types  of  character 
and  situation — Illustrations,  93,  94.  Value  of  typical 
characters;  they  begin  the  work  of  sorting  humanity 
into  classes,  95.  Traditional  tales  begin  the  revela- 
tion of  ideal  humanity — National  myths  define  this 
ideal  more  clearly,  96.  The  ideal  human  being  as 
portrayed  in  Aryan  myth  has:  First,  a  divine  hered- 
ity; second,  a  double  selfhood ;  third,  a  besetting  sin; 
fourth,  he  inspires  the  hatred  of  lesser  men;  fifth, 
explores  and  subdues  the  world  and  himself;  sixth, 
sacrifices  himself  for  others ;  seventh,  realizes  himself 
through  self-renunciation,  96-99.  Differences  be- 
tween Greek,  Roman,  and  Teutonic  myths:  Greece 
reveals  beautiful  individuality;  Rome,  self -subordi- 
nation; Teutonic  myth  destructive  self-assertion, 
100-1.  Connection  of  Greek  myth  with  Greek 
history — GreecejeaJized  the  ideal  of  freedom  in  the 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xix 


divine;  created  beautiful  bodies  through  disciplined 
activity;  revealed  free  activity  in  statues;  created 
all  forms  of  literary  art ;  made  language  the  material 
of  literary  art;  produced  standard  work  of  literary 
criticism  (Aristotle's  Poetics);  fought  Asia  in  de- 
fense of  ideals  of  freedom — Defined  freedom  in  her 
philosophy,  101-3.  Rome  embodied  freedom  in 
the  form  of  law — Originated  the  idea  of  contract — 
The  combination  of  two  wills  suggests  a  common  will 
— ^The  community  which  safeguards  contract  is  a 
higher  revelation  of  common  will — Recognition  of 
transcendental  will  calls  forth  purpose  and  patriot- 
ism— Purf)ose  recognized  in  nature — All  lesser  pur- 
poses organized  to  accomplish  the  higher  purpose 
of  the  state — "Cosmic  patriotism,"  103-5.  The 
Teutonic  peoples  clamor  for  satisfaction  of  immediate 
impulse  and  recognition  of  their  immediate  personal- 
ity— ^These  are  savage  and  self-destructive  demands. 
They  assert  the  form  of  freedom  but  deny  its  sub- 
stance— ^They  portend  a  tragic  destiny — ^This  tragic 
destiny  is  adumbrated  in  the  great  Teutonic  myth 
all  of  whose  chief  personages  perish  through  fatal 
deeds,  105-9.  The  Hebrew  contribution  to  the 
ideal  of  freedom — ^The  objective  validity  of  the  moral 
as  point  of  departure  for  the  Hebrew  religion — ^The 
inseparable  correlate  of  morality  is  will — ^Therefore 
if  morality  has  objective  validity  there  is  a  personal 
God — Righteousness  and  loving-kindness  are  neces- 
sary impUcations  of  personality — ^The  Hebrews  re- 
vealed the  true  God — ^I'he  nation  lived  by  faith  in 
this  God — ^The  Covenant  of  Righteousness,  109-13. 
Retreat  of  contemporary  thought  from  morality 
to  expediency,  113-14.  Historic  ascent  from  the 
concept  of  a  Personal  God  whose  necessary  attri- 
butes are  justice  and  love  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Trin- 


XX  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ity,  114-15.  Initial  form  of  this  doctrine,  115-16. 
Double  reaction  of  the  Teutonic  peoples  to  the 
Christian  ideal  as  illustrated  in  the  legends  of  chivalry 
and  the  legend  of  Faust,  116-18.  Historic  resolu- 
tion of  the  contradiction  which  rends  the  soul  of  ger- 
maine  peoples — What  is  claimed  for  any  one  man 
must  be  granted  to  all  men — Gunpowder — Printing — 
Luther  —  Transfiguration  of  the  Faust  myth  by 
Goethe — Adequate  definition  of  freedom  by  Hegel, 
118-19.  Germany  solves  theoretic  implications  of 
freedom — England  and  America  discover  the  practical 
instrumentalities  by  which  freedom  may  be  estab- 
lished among  men:  First,  Local  self-government; 
second,  National  government  of,  by,  and  for  the 
people;  third,  public  schools;  fourth,  public  libraries; 
fifth,  steamships,  railways,  telegraph  wires,  and  news- 
papers, 119-20.  Runnymede  and  Shakespeare,  120- 
21.  Goal  of  history  the  federated  union  of  the  world 
and  the  cosmopolitan  individual — Mutual  action  and 
reaction  of  literature  and  life,  121-23.  Summary 
and  prophecy — Man  creates  himself  in  and  through 
communion  with  men — History  and  literature  reveal 
the  stages  of  his  self-realization  in  ever  enlarging 
communities — Both  prophesy  as  their  consumma- 
tion the  realization  of  freedom  in  and  through  a 
cosmic  community,  123-24. 

CHAPTER  V 

Hbrbart  and  Froebel 125-49 

Discrimination  between  Herbart  and  his  more  radical 
disciples:  First,  they  failed  to  give  sufficient  atten- 
tion to  his  distinction  between  primordial  and  de- 
rived presentations;  second,  they  did  not  sufficiently 
consider  his  plea  that  instruction  should  be  divided 
into  two  main  lines,  the  one  for  understanding,  the 
other  for  sympathy,   125-28.     Herbart  re^gnizes 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xxi 

PAOB 

the  need  of  alphabets  of  sense-perception  and  per- 
ceives that  the  most  important  of  these  is  a  mathe- 
matical alphabet — His  analysis  of  geometric  forms 
into  triangles,  128-29.  Herbart's  point  of  depar- 
ture for  humane  studies — His  admirable  suggestions 
with  regard  to  stories,  130-31.  Defect  of  Herbart's 
plan  an  exclusive  emphasis  upon  assimilative  activ- 
ity, 131-33.  Defects  in  Herbart's  explanation  of 
apperception:  First,  denies  the  spontaneous  activity 
and  structural  form  of  mind;  second,  ignores  the  in- 
fluence of  feeling  and  volition,  133-34.  Herbart's 
pedagogy  self-contradictory  because  it  insists  upon 
interest  as  both  the  result  of  thought-masses  and  the 
agency  through  which  they  are  created,  134.  Dis- 
cussion of  Herbart's  ontology  and  psychology,  135- 
37.  Connection  between  Herbart's  own  life  and  his 
insistence  upon  assimilative  processes — ^The  great 
age  in  which  Herbart  lived  and  his  detachment  from 
it,  137-39.  Froebel's  enthusiastic  response  to  the 
spirit  of  his  age — Froebel's  two  great  insights:  First, 
the  values  of  human  life  are  concrete  expressions  of 
the  substance  of  freedom;  second,  play  is  that  activ- 
ity of  childhood  which  achieves  the  form  of  freedom, 
140.  Play  and  work,  141-142.  The  kindergarten 
freights  the  form  of  play  with  the  values  of  life,  142- 
44.  Froebel's  psychology:  the  self  is  an  aboriginal 
energy  whose  ideal  form  is  self -consciousness,  145. 
Froebel's  recognition  of  the  implications  of  self-con- 
sciousness, 146.  Contribution  of  Froebel's  psychology 
to  his  pedagogics — His  great  achievements:  First 
recognition  of  the  priority  of  action ;  second,  connect 
tion  between  plays  of  childhood  and  values  of  life; 
third,  accent  upon  imitative  games,  typical  objects, 
acts,  processes,  and  characters ;  fourth,  use  of  natural 
analogues;  fifth,  presentation  of  counterparts;  sixth, 
creation  of  three  types  of  exercise;  seventh,  organiza- 
tion of  kindergarten  instrumentalities,  147-48. 


xxii  Table  of  contents 

CHAPTER  VI 

PAQE 

The  Free-Plat  Programme 150-89 

^reggy,yyyyj|^j£^ee-play  ideal — Each  child  to  do  what 
he  pleases  as  he  pleases,  150-53.     Record  of  two  days 
in  a  free-play  kindergarten,  153-56.     Contrast  be- 
tween free-play  and  Froebelian  ideal — ^The  latter 
grafts  upon  plays  pointing  toward  human  values  the 
higher  realization  of  their  own  ideal,  156,  157.     Con- 
centric programme  conceives  child  as  a  learning  being 
— Free-play  programme  conceives  him  as  a  reacting 
organism — Froebelian  programme  conceives  him  as 
possessing  a  generic  selfhood,  157,  158.     Test  experi- 
ments to  determine  children's  reactions  to  kinder- 
garten instrumentalities — Reasons  why  these  tests 
are  misleading:  First,  jumble  of  materials  predisposes 
to  imperative  or  vacillating  choices;  second,  children 
need  initiation  in  order  to  choose;   third,  defects  of 
kindergartners  create  disturbing  influences;  fourth, 
kindergartners'  own  judgments  of  value  react  upon 
choices  of  children,   159-63.     Thirty-five  years  of 
experience  proves  priority  of  both  interest  and  value 
to  belong  to  building  gifts,  cutting,  drawing,  coloring, 
clay  work,  parquetry  and  sewing — Justification  of 
kindergarten  material  through  experience  of  ages, 
163.     The  mediatorial  methods  of  the  kindergarten: 
Jirst,  transit  from  imitation  toward  originality;  sec- 
'\  jid,  suggested  subject;  third,  free  initiative  with 
/axpert  reaction;  fourth,  the  simple  problem;  fifth, 
/  jroup  work,  164,  165.     Two  fallacies  of  the  free-play 
/    ^cindergarten:    First,  the  conception  of  the  kinder- 
1     garten  as  a  substitute  for  childish  play  in  its  totality; 
I     second,  conception  of  the  child  as  only  a  reacting  or- 
1     ganism — Result  of  this  second  fallacy  undue  emphasis 
y   upon  incitements,  165,  166.     Contrast  of  Froebelian 
V  and  free-play  kindergartens — The  method  of   the 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xxiii 

PAGB 

former  assists  children  to  integrate  themselves;  that 
of  the  latter  tends  toward  disintegration  by  betraying 
children  into  vacillating  or  imperative  choices,  166- 
68.  Collapse  of  free-play  into  reflex  activity  illus- 
trated by  plays  of  physical  action — Dogma  that  play 
should  be  directed  by  hereditary  impulses — Incen- 
tives to  quicken  these  impulses — Dogma  that  funda- 
mental muscles  precede  accessory  muscles  in  the 
order  of  development — Denial  of  this  dogma — 
Discussion  of  muscular  coordination — Two  points 
established :  First,  fine  muscles  in  full  operation  very 
early  in  life;  second,  development  takes  place 
through  coordination  of  diffuse  movements — Value 
of  the  kindergarten  as  a  preparation  for  the  arts  and 
trades,  168-74.  Representative  plays — Blindness 
of  free-play  kindergartners  to  meaning  of  imitation  ^  | 
First,  what  a  child  imitates  he  tends  to  become;  \  \ 
second,  what  he  imitates  he  will  notice;  third,  what  \] 
he  imitates  he  begins  to  understand,  174-77.  Circle 
games  discarded — Free-play  programme  assumes 
that  education  should  never  lead  children  to  do  any- 
thing they  might  not  have  done  of  themselves — 
Biologic  and  social  "short  cuts" — Education  should 
seek  these — •Froebelian  games  mediate  between  the 
traditional  games  of  the  nursery  and  the  playground,! 
177,  178.  Restatement  of  Froebelian  ideal — ItL  f 
aims  to  abet  generic  modes  of  self-expression,  178,  |  | 
179.  The  immediate  interests  of  little  children  not  a  \J 
reliable  index  of  what  is  contributory  to  their  develop- 
ment, 179,  180.  Methods  of  story-telling  which 
chain  the  mind  to  sense-perception — Wide  preva- 
lence of  these  methods,  180-83.  Picture-writing — 
Repudiation  of  design — Results  of  this  repudia- 
tion, 183,  184.  Summary:  First,  the  free-play  pro- 
gramme discourages  self-activity;  second,  minimizes 
exercise  of  hands  and  fingers;  third,  arrests  intelli- 
gence; fourth,  interferes  with  development  of  will, 


xxiv  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PASB 

185-87.  Influence  of  free-play  ideal  upon  existing 
kindergartens:  First,  undue  increase  of  games  of 
mere  physical  movement;  second,  concentration  of 
interest  upon  animals;  third,  use  of  valueless  toys; 
fourth,  elimination  of  valuable  instrumentalities; 
fifth,  omission  of  exercises  which  organize  experience; 
sixth,  enslaving  methods  of  story-telling;  seventh, 
repudiation  of  symbolism;  eighth,  repudiation  ol 
design,  187,  188.  Comparison  of  Froebelian,  con- 
centric, and  free-play  kindergartens — The  first 
recognizes  both  the  values  of  life  and  the  self -activity 
of  the  child — The  second  denies  self-activity  but 
recognizes  values — The  third  denies  self -activity  and 
ignores  values,  188,  189. 

CHAPTER  VII 
The  Individual  and  the  Race  ....  190-225 
Contemporary  Rousseauism — It  fails  to  adjust  the  rival 
claims  of  biologic  and  historic  recapitulation — It 
puts  an  arresting  emphasis  upon  feral  and  animal 
activities — It  gives  scant  attention  to  five  important 
questions:  First,  Are  all  the  stages  of  the  process 
of  development  directly  related  as  antecedents  and 
consequences?  second,  Do  some  race  experiences 
represent  a  wandering  from  the  path  of  progress? 
third.  Must  the  individual  recapitulate  such  wander- 
ings? fourth.  Have  goodness  and  wisdom  been 
achieved  by  following  nature  or  warring  against 
nature?  fifth.  If  by  war,  whence  came  the  ideals 
which  incited  war?  189-93.  Discussion  of  the  pre- 
cept. Give  Nature  her  fling:  First,  among  our  native 
instincts  are  many  to  which  we  must  not  give  free 
fling;  second,  history  shows  that  virtue  has  been 
achieved  through  self-restraint;  third,  psychology 
insists  upon  inhibition — The  method  of  laissez-aller 
arrests  development  at  its  point  of  departure,  193-97. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xxv 

FAOK 

Discussion  of  the  precept,  Make  virtue  pay:  First, 
it  presupposes  that  the  child  is  wholly  selfish ;  second, 
it  appeals  to  selfishness  by  making  good  acts  of 
profit  and  bad  acts  of  disadvantage;  third,  thereby 
it  substitutes  expediency  for  virtue;  fourth,  its  pre- 
supposition is  of  more  than  doubtful  validity,  but  its 
method  finds  many  parallels  in  history,  197-203.  A 
third  method  of  moral  education — Moral  ideals  uni- 
versalize antecedent  but  limited  affections — Love  and 
sympathy  are  native  emotions — By  enlarging  their 
range  and  increasing  their  strength  we  may  ex- 
pel baser  emotions — "Expulsive  power  of  higher 
affections" — ^The  activity  of  inhibition  directed  not 
against  terminal  acts  but  initial  emotions — In- 
hibitory results  produced  by  self -expressive  methods 
— The  motive  jxjwer  which  makes  possible  the  exten- 
sion of  love  and  sympathy,  faith  in  the  fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  brotherhood  of  man — Faith  implied  in 
all  forms  of  human  society — Final  premise  of  true 
moral  education  faith  in  personality  as  supreme 
principle  of  the  universe  and  in  the  soul  of  man  as 
participating  in  this  principle — Vindication  of  this 
premise  by  history,  philosophy,  and  psychology, 
204-18.  Froebel's  statement  that  the  feeling  of  com- 
munity supplies  the  point  of  departure  for  moral 
education,  219.  Definition  of  different  virtues  as 
modes  of  action  called  forth  by  right  relationship 
between  individuals  and  social  wholes — Conclusion 
that  good  habits  must  be  formed  by  good  actions  and 
good  actions  performed  through  individual  initiative, 
220,  221.  In  intellectual  education  no  less  than  in 
moral  lower  interests  must  be  inhibited  by  creating 
higher  ones — Attention  the  beginning  of  intellectual 
culture — It  is  an  activity  of  inhibition — ^Two  forms 
of  attention:  First,  voluntary  attention;  second, 
selective  interest — Through  acts  of  voluntary  atten- 
tion we  become  the  determiners  of  our  own  selective 


xxvi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

interest,  222,  223.  Answers  to  questions:  First,  evo- 
lution by  antagonism;  second,  mankind  has  often 
strayed  from  the  path  of  progress:  third,  abortive 
exp>eriments  should  not  be  repeated;  fourth,  progress 
by  war  against  nature ;  fifth,  ideals  are  universalized 
affections,  223,  224.  Contemporary  Rousseauism 
claims  that  the  development  of  the  individual 
should  repeat  that  of  the  race — In  practice  it  repeats 
a  discarded  terminus  ab  quo,  224,  225. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  New  Return  to  Nature 226-38 

The  new  return  to  nature  presupposes  that  all  things 
may  be  explained  by  their  process  of  becoming — 
Reaction  of  this  presupposition  upon  men's  views 
of  customs,  institutions,  religion,  art,  and  literature, 
226-30.  The  history  of  the  new  return  to  nature  is 
the  history  of  the  free-play  kindergarten  writ  large — 
In  every  sphere  it  shows  a  rapid  regress  from  false 
freedom  to  fate,  230-32.  Froebel's  studies  of  child- 
hood were  influenced  by  the  presupposition  that 
in  the  structure  of  consciousness  must  be  sought 
the  key  to  nature,  man,  and  education,  232-34. 
The  fundamental  tenet  of  Neo-Rousseauism  is  "that 
pedagogics  must  seek  the  ways  and  means  of  in- 
vesting man's  capital  of  native  instincts,"  234-36. 
Froebel  holds  that  man  and  the  universe  are  evolving 
in  a  discernible  direction  toward  a  definable  goal — 
This  goal  defined  as  an  infinite  community  of  souls 
each  of  which  fulfills  itself  through  communion  with 
all  others — The  universe  is  psychical  in  its  nature — 
The  nature  of  consciousness  must  determine  both  the 
subject  matter  and  the  method  of  education,  236- 
38. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS        Xxvil 
CHAPTER  IX 

PAGE 

The  Industrial  Programme 239-80 

The  industrial  programme  concentric  in  form — Its  cores 
of  concentration  primitive  industries,  239,  240.  An 
industrial  programme,  241^3.  Loss  of  the  crea- 
tive idea  that  the  form  of  play  shall  be  freighted 
with  the  values  of  life — Discussion  of  work  and 
play:  Work  is  activity  directed  by  a  purpose; 
its  demand  that  the  worker  shall  hold  himself  to 
his  task;  its  value  that  it  teaches  the  great  lesson  of 
self-subordination — Play  is  activity  for  its  own  r 
sake;  its  value  is  that  it  creates  the  self  which  later 
shall  learn  to  subordinate  itself — Confusion  of  mind 
shown  in  recent  discussions  of  work  and  play — 
Activities  which  offer  scope  for  originality  will  tend 
to  assume  the  form  of  play,  244-49.  Most  important 
arguments  advanced  for  the  introduction  of  house- 
hold industries  into  the  kindergarten — Historic  re- 
capitulation substituted  for  biologic  recapitulation — 
Primitive  ii^dustrial  activities  said  to  explain  the 
instinctive  reactions  of  children — ^These  primitive 
activities  represented  to-day  by  household  industries 
— Denial  of  this  claim — Denial  of  the  claim  that  the 
psychical  attitudes  of  childhood  can  be  fully  ex- 
plained by  heredity — Denial  of  the  claim  that  even 
instinctive  reactions  have  been  created  solely  by 
racial  activities  of  industrial  type,  249-57.  Discus- 
sion of  the  argument  that  children  should  repeat 
primitive  industries  in  order  to  dissolve  the  "dream 
of  magic,"  257-59.  The  method  of  the  industrial 
programme  involves  a  persistent  appeal  to  the  under- 
standing, 259-6L  Constructive  work,  261-63.  The 
method  of  Froebel  follows  the  order  of  psychologic 
development  and  provides  for  an  ascent  of  activity 
from  physical  movement,  through  symbolic  represen- 
tatipn  and  experimental  arrangement  to  free  creation 


xxviii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAOB 

— ^This  method  illustrated,  263-68.  One  practical 
issue  between  Froebelian  and  industrial  kinder- 
gartners  is  the  relative  stress  which  they  respectively 
place  upon  utility  and  beauty — Dangers  threatening 
the  United  States — A  second  issue  relates  to  the 
order  of  mental  development — Froebelian  kinder- 
gartners  hold  that  this  order  is  play,  art,  work,  268-71. 
Reaction  of  the  industrial  ideal  upon  kindergarten 
games,  271,  272.  Reaction  of  the  same  ideal  upon 
stories,  272-78.  Work  and  play,  understanding 
and  imagination  contrast  with  and  supplement  each 
other — Insistence  upon  priority  of  play  Over  work 
in  the  order  of  development,  278-80. 

CHAPTER  X 

The  Sociauzation  op  the  School  ....  281-99 
The  industrial  programme  is  related  to  the  movement 
known  as  the  socialization  of  the  school,  281.  The 
school  shall  become  "an  embryonic  yet  typical  com- 
munity"— Industries  shall  be  the  articulating  centers 
of  school  life,  282-85.  Relationship  between  the 
articulating  centers  of  the  socialized  school  and  the 
Herbartian  cores  of  concentration — Reasons  given 
for  the  substitution  of  primitive  industries  for  prim- 
itive culture  products,  285-87.  Attempt  to  solve 
the  problem  of  discipline  through  participation 
in  productive  activities,  287-89.  Unification  of 
studies — Industries  as  articulating  centers  of  his- 
tory, science,  literature,  and  art,  289-94.  Industrial 
activities  as  mediators  between  the  native  interests 
of  childhood  and  the  studies  of  the  school — Fourfold 
interests  of  the  child:  First,  interest  in  communica- 
tion; second,  in  finding  out  about  things;  third,  in 
construction;  fourth,  in  artistic  expression,  295-97. 
Summary:  "The  facts  and  truths  that  enter  into  the 
child's  present  experience  and  those  contained  in  the 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS  xxix 

PAGE 

iubject  matter  of  studies ' '  can  be  connected  because 
"they  are  the  initial  and  final  terms  of  one  reality," 
297-99. 

CHAPTER  XI 

The  Living  Issue 300-38 

Agreements  between  the  ideal  of  the  kindergarten  and 
the  aims  of  the  socialized  school — An  anxious  ques- 
tion, 300, 301.  Industries  and  literature.  Discussion 
of  two  questions :  First,  Are  industries  the  progenitors 
of  culture-products;  second.  Is  the  reflection  of  local 
and  temporal  conditions  the  chief  value  of  literature? 
— Life  and  industry  are  not  coextensive  terms — 
The  literature  of  an  age  cannot  be  explained  by  its 
industries — ^The  literature  of  each  nation  and  each 
age  reflects  all  aspects  of  its  life — The  life  reflected  is 
itself  either  an  approximate  embodiment  of  generic 
ideals  or  a  struggle  of  the  generic  spirit  to  define  these 
ideals  more  adequately — Illustrations — Discussion 
of  myth — Its  value  as  a  primordial  revelation  of 
generic  ideals,  302-13.  Industries  and  art — Art 
is  not  the  child  of  industry — The  true  order  of  devel- 
opment is  play,  art,  work — The  attempt  to  derive 
art  from  industry  implies  a  conception  of  art  which 
ignores  its  defining  mark — Picture-writing  is  not  art 
— The  principle  of  art  is  order — Art  is  play  or  spon- 
taneous activity  which  imposes  upon  itself  the 
structural  form  of  human  consciousness — True 
method  of  art  teaching,  313-18.  Industries  and  his- 
tory— Discussion  of  the  question:  Is  it  through 
occupations  determined  by  natural  environment  that 
mankind  has  made  its  political  and  historical  prog- 
ress?— Great  value  of  that  view  of  history  which  as- 
cends from  the  idea  of  extraneous  relations  between 
man  and  the  world  to  the  idea  of  a  self-related  total- 


XXX  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ity  of  historic  experience — A  non  sequitur  cdnclusion 
from  this  conception  of  history — The  final  source  of 
human  progress  is  free  activity — Humanity  ascends 
to  higher  levels  through  activities  which  are  their  own 
ends — Religion  is  the  foundation  of  moral  life  and 
the  creator  of  civilization — Oriental  and  occidental 
civiUzations  contrasted — The  contrast  explained  by 
their  contrasting  religions — The  marvels  of  modern 
industry  a  by-product  of  Christianity,  318-27.  His- 
tory is  the  progress  of  man  into  the  consciousness  of 
freedom,  327,  328.  Industries  and  science — The 
method  which  makes  industries  the  articulating 
centers  of  science  is  open  to  two  objections:  First, 
it  demands  syntheses  children  cannot  make;  second, 
it  prevents  a  scientific  evolution  of  the  sciences,  329, 
330.  The  merit  of  the  socialized  school  is  that  it 
attempts  to  guide  the  spontaneous  activities  of 
childhood  toward  the  corresponding  values  of  life — ■ 
Its  defect  is  that  it  makes  industries  articulating 
centers  for  all  other  values — In  defense  of  its  pro- 
cedure it  invokes  the  principle  of  historic  recapitula- 
tion— In  reality  this  principle  condemns  its  procedure 
— All  great  human  values  are  aboriginal  expressions 
of  the  free  human  spirit — The  final  explanation  of  the 
defect  of  the  socialized  school  is  the  conviction  that 
the  sole  aim  of  the  school  is  to  prepare  for  social  life 
combined  with  a  conception  of  social  life  which  iden- 
tifies it  with  industrial  life — The  socialized  school 
fails  to  make  adequate  provision  "for  the  things 
fertile  of  distinctive  individuality,"  330-33.  In- 
dustrial activities  and  school  discipline — The  order 
of  the  workshop  substituted  for  the  order  of  the 
traditional  school — Inconsistency  of  this  procedure, 
334-36.  Contrast  between  the  method  of  Froebel 
and  the  method  of  the  socialized  school,  337,  338. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS        XXxi 
CHAPTER  XII 

PAQS 

Three  World- Views 339-86 

Generative  idea  of  Goethe's  Faust — ^This  idea  a  key  to 
the  issue  in  men's  souls  to-day — Man  is  conscious — 
If  there  be  no  eternal  consciousness  to  which  his  con- 
sciousness corresponds  he  is  an  outcast  of  the  uni- 
verse, 339-41.  Naturalism  explains  the  world-order 
as  a  chance  process  with  a  tragic  outcome,  341-43. 
Reaction  against  this  explanation  as  shown  in  litera- 
ture, science,  and  psychology — Literature  portrays 
purposes  as  opposed  to  instincts — Science  suspects 
that  natural  selection  cannot  fully  explain  evolution 
and  recognizes  the  influence  of  intelligence — Psychol- 
ogy discovers  that  "a  belief  in  free  will  is  still  open  to 
us" — Force  the  correlate  of  will — Characteristic  fea- 
ture of  contemporary  thought  the  transfer  of  atten- 
tion from  instinct  to  will,  from  human  passions  to 
human  purposes — No  agreement  as  to  what  these 
purposes  should  be — ^The  end  of  man  is  assumed  to 
be  action — But  action  itself  needs  a  final  end — This 
final  end  hidden  from  many  contemporary  thinkers 
— Conventional  morality  replaced  by  adaptive  in- 
genuity— Repudiation  of  "absolute  standards  and 
eternal  values,"  343-5L  Philosophy  is  conscious- 
ness exploring,  inventorying,  organizing,  and  explain- 
ing its  own  content — Pragmatism  is  the  philosophy 
which  most  nearly  explains  the  content  of  much 
contemporary  thought — Pragmatism  was  first  a 
method  of  philosophic  procedure — The  pragmatic 
method  tests  ideas  by  their  consequences — It  lacks 
a  criterion  by  which  to  test  these  consequences  them- 
selves— Solution  of  this  dilemma  attempted  by  the 
extension  of  pragmatism  from  a  method  of  philo- 
sophic procedure  to  a  theory  of  truth — As  a  method 
pragmatism  asks  what  will  work — As  a  theory  of 


xxxii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAOB 

truth  it  is  "  the  conviction  that  ideas  become  true  in 
so  far  as  they  accomplish  the  work  of  uniting  new 
experience  with  old  " — ^The  outcome  of  the  pragmatic 
doctrine  is  "that  the  true  is  only  the  expedient  in  the 
way  of  our  thinking  just  as  the  right  is  only  the 
expedient  in  the  way  of  our  behaving — Accord  of 
pragmatism  with  the  spirit  of  contemporary  literature 
— Both  deny  the  conception  of  truth  as  correspond- 
ence with  eternal  reality — With  emergence  of  this 
denial  into  clear  consciousness  pragmatism  becomes 
not  only  a  method  for  testing  the  validity  of  ideas 
and  a  genetic  theory  of  truth  but  also  a  hypothesis 
with  regard  to  the  structure  of  the  universe — This 
hypothesis  is  that  the  universe  is  in  process  of  mak- 
ing ;  that  it  has  alternative  possibilities  and  that  its 
future  is  not  assured — The  universe  has  no  will  of  its 
own — As  we  substitute  truths  in  the  plural  for 
f  Truth  with  a  big  T  and  in  the  singular,"  so  we 
must  substitute  wills  in  the  plural  for  one  eternal 
and  absolute  will — "Pragmatism  postpones  dogmatic 
answer  with  regard  to  the  subject  of  religion,"  but 
the  sympathies  of  pragmatists  are  with  "the  view 
that  the  universe  is  ultimately  a  joint-stock  affair — 
Salvation  is  uncertain  and  partial,  351-60.  Kinship 
between  the  philosophy  of  naturalism  and  the  re- 
ligious creed  of  farther  Asia — ^Three  tenets  of  the 
Oriental  creed,  one  unity;  indifference  to  moral 
distinctions — Extinction — Revival  of  these  tenets, 
360-64.  Kinship  between  pragmatism  and  Zoro- 
astrianism — Characteristic  feature  of  Zoroastrianism 
the  renunciation  of  unity  and  the  setting  up  of  dis- 
tinction— Great  deed  of  this  religion  the  determina- 
tion to  fight  evil — Pragmatism  has  arisen  out  of  a 
resolute  grapple  with  the  enigma  of  evil — Belief  of 
pragmatists  that  idealism  holds  an  immoral  doctrine 
of  evil,  364-70.  The  philosophy  of  absolute  idealism 
— Its  presupposition  is  that  the  final  explaAation  of 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS  xxxiii 

PAQE 

the  universe  must  be  sought  in  a  completely  realized 
self-consciousness  —  Denial  of  this  presupposition 
underlies  every  practical  issue  discussed  in  this  book, 
370-72.  Many  interpreters  of  idealism  have  aided 
to  bring  their  fundamental  postulate  into  disrepute 
by  assuming  that  the  perfect  self-consciousness  in- 
cludes all  individual  selves — This  assumption  makes 
God  the  author  of  evil — ^The  human  soul  is  not  a  part 
of  God — Each  human  soul  is  a  duplicate  of  the  self- 
determining  form  of  the  divine  self-consciousness, 
372,  373.  The  distinctive  characteristic  of  self-con- 
sciousness is  subject-objectivity  —  The  self  makes 
itself  its  own  object  and  recognizes  itself  in  its 
object — In  this  self-objectifying  act  intellect  and 
will  are  conjoined — ^The  object  of  a  perfect  self-con- 
sciousness must  be  another  consciousness  in  every 
respect  its  equal — The  eternal  logos,  373-76.  The 
fact  that  all  idealists  have  not  reached  this  conclusion 
does  not  militate  against  its  logical  necessity,  but 
suggests  that  the  implications  of  the  idealistic  pre- 
supposition have  not  been  adequately  apprehended — 
The  results  of  this  inadequate  apprehension  are  the 
philosophies  of  monism  and  pluralism:  Monism  loses 
human  freedom,  responsibility,  and  immortality — 
Pluralism  loses  noetic  unity  and  is  confronted  with 
the  problem  how  eternal  souls  can  be  in  a  process  of 
becoming — ^The  conception  of  an  eternal  self-con- 
sciousness objectifying  and  recognizing  itself  in  a 
second  self-consciousness,  which  is  in  every  respect 
its  equal  but  differs  from  it  in  the  fact  that  it  is  gener- 
ated in  infinite  past  times  through  this  self -objectify- 
ing act,  solves  the  problems  which  are  insoluble  by 
monism  and  pluralism,  376-78.  Words,  first  and 
second  persons,  substituted  for  first  and  second  self- 
consciousness — Difference  between  the  first  and 
second  persons — The  self-objectifying  consciousness 
of  the  first  is  that  of  an  aboriginal  generator;  the 
8 


XXXiv  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAOS 

consciousness  of  the  second  is  that  of  a  generator  who 
has  been  eternally  generated — His  knowledge  of  his 
perfect  personality  is  objectified  as  a  third  perfect 
person — His  knowledge  of  himself  as  generated  in 
infinite  past  time  is  objectified  as  a  process  ascending 
from  nothingness  to  identification  with  the  first 
perfect  person — A  process  completed  in  infinite  past 
time — ^This  objectified  process  is  the  evolutionary 
ascent  of  nature  and  man — Its  consummation  is  the 
cosmic  community  which  collects  power  from  each 
of  its  members  and  endows  each  with  the  power  of  all 
— ^This  cosmic  community  has  existed  from  all  eter- 
nity, 378-82.  The  enigma  of  the  world  is  the  exist- 
ence of  evil — ^The  insight  that  creation  arises  through 
the  contemplation  by  the  second  person  of  his  own 
derivation  solves  this  enigma,  383.  Goodness  and 
justice  as  necessary  attributes  of  God — Goodness  is 
altruism  or  love  which  gives  itself — Justice  or  the 
return  of  the  deed  upon  the  doer  is  recognition  of  the 
real  freedom  conferred  by  divine  altruism — Perfect 
justice  can  only  be  exercised  toward  a  perfect  being — • 
To  exercise  it  toward  imperfect  beings  would  make 
an  evolutionary  world-order  impossible — Since  this 
evolutionary  world-order  is  necessarily  presupposed 
by  the  self -objectifying  act  through  which  the  second 
person  makes  actual  his  own  timeless  derivation, 
altruism  must  be  recognized  as  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  the  divine  character  and  justice  be  given 
validity  only  in  so  far  as  it  does  not  make  against 
altruism,  384-86. 


EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES  IN  THE 
KINDERGARTEN 


CHAPTER   I 

THE    CONCENTEIC    PROGKAMME 

The  kindergarten  is  the  attempted  embodiment 
of  a  few  great  educational  ideas.  The  imperfect 
apprehension  of  any  one  of  these  ideas  enfeebles 
its  practice;  the  false  apprehension  of  any  one  of 
these  ideas  distorts  its  practice.  Moreover,  the  in- 
adequately or  falsely  apprehended  idea  is  betrayed 
into  strange  alliances,  and  thereby  undergoes  a 
radical  change  which  is  reflected  in  every  detail 
of  practical  work.  Hence,  during  the  past  twenty- 
five  years  there  have  arisen  three  great  departures 
from  the  principles  and  methods  of  the  historic 
kindergarten.  The  practical  outcome  of  the  first 
departure  was  the  concentric  programme;  that  of 
the  second  the  free  play  programme;  that  of  the 
third  the  industrial  programme.  To  illustrate  and 
discuss  th^e  several  programmes,  elicit  the  ideas 
which  cheated  them,  and  present  the  contrasting 
principles  and  practice  of  Froebel  will  be  the  effort 
of  this  book. 

1 


EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 


The  characteristic  feature  of  the  ccmcentric  pro- 
gramme is  the  connection  of  all  exercises  with  a 
concentration  center,  and  the  consequent  subordi- 
nation of  gifts,  occupations,  and  games  to  the  pur- 
pose of  illustrating  a  chosen  theme.  As  example 
is  better  than  description,  I  present  a  concentric 
programme  which  received  the  prize  of  fifty  dol- 
lars offered  by  the  P atria  Club  of  New  York  for 
a  kindergarten  exercise  adapted  to  training  chil- 
dren in  patriotism,  and  which,  in  a  preface  pre- 
pared by  a  special  committee  of  the  club,  is  de- 
clared to  be  "  the  best  among  many  admirable  ex- 
ercises sent  by  skilled  kindergartners  from  various 
parts  of  the  United  States."  The  theme  of  this 
programme  is  the  life  and  character  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  and  the  exercises  are  planned  for  the  four 
school  days  preceding  his  birthday. 

FIRST   DAY 

Morning  Talk. — The  early  home  of  Lincoln  in  Ken- 
tucky. Lincoln's  mother.  The  removal  to  Indiana. 
The  "half-face  camp."  Little  Abe's  bed  of  leaves. 
His  kind  stepmother.  His  school  days.  Hospitality 
and  self-respect  of  his  father,  in  spite  of  poverty. 
How  Abraham  "did  his  sums."  How  he  learned  to 
write.    His  first  earnings.    His  flatboat. 

Gift. — A  sequence.  1.  "  The  half-face  camp."  2. 
The  fire  shovel  and  Abraham's  four  favorite  books. 
3.  His  flatboat.  4.  The  fireplace  by  which  he  worked. 
5.  The  table  at  which  he  wrote  letters  fqr  the  nei| 
bora. 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME       3 

Occupation. — Cutting  and  pasting.  ^  Cut  out  shovel 
and  paste  on  card.  Speak  of  Lincoln's  faithfulness  in 
doing  difficult  tasks,  and  encourage  the  children  to 
emulate  it. 

SECOND   DAY 

Morning  Talk. — The  youth  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 
He  is  trusted  on  a  long  journey  down  the  Ohio  and 
Mississippi  rivers.  Removal  to  Illinois.  Helps  his 
father  build  the  log-cabin.  Hires  out  to  split  rails, 
being  paid  in  cloth  for  his  clothes — four  hundred  rails 
for  one  yard  of  homespun.  Carrying  the  hogs  to 
New  Orleans  in  flatboat.  His  honesty  when  a  clerk, 
walking  several  miles  to  return  six  cents  which  he  had 
unwittingly  overcharged   a  customer. 

Gift. — Tablets,  squares,  and  half  squares.  Arrange 
to  represent  flatboat.  May  be  loaded  with  second 
gift  cylinder  beads  as  barrels  of '  produce,  or  with 
paper  objects,  pigs  or  other  stock,  known  to  have  been 
carried  by  Lincoln. 

Occupation. — Sand-table.  Ohio  and  Mississippi 
rivers,  from  Illinois  to  Gulf;  make  flatboat  of  four 
square  tablets  or  folded  paper.  Do  not  enter  into 
minute  detail  as  to  the  topography;  rather  offer  a 
description  that  may  give  an  idea  of  the  mighty  rivers 
and  the  time  necessary  to  float  down  them,  their  as- 
pect both  day  and  night,  the  change  in  the  climate 
and  population  observable  as  the  boat  drifted  south, 
etc. 

THIRD   DAY 

Morning  Talk. — Lincoln  as  "captain,"  storekeeper, 
postmaster,  surveyor.  Walked  one  hundred  miles  in 
his  homespun  clothes  to  help  make  the  laws  in  the 


4  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

Legislature.  Kindness  and  honesty  as  a  lawyer.  Lin- 
coln and  the  pig.     Lincoln's  belief  concerning  slavery. 

Oift. — Sticks ;  measuring  and  counting  -  lesson. 
Connect  with  Lincoln's  surveying  experiences,  giving 
names  of  different  farms,  and  making  as  graphic  as 
possible. 

Occupation. — Fold  beauty  forms  in  red,  white,  and 
blue  paper,  by  dictation,  to  make  a  frame  for  Lin- 
coln's picture. 

FOURTH   DAY 

Morning  Talk. — Lincoln  as  member  of  Congress 
and  President.  Causes  of  the  Civil  War,  given  im- 
partially, and  not  too  much  in  detail.  The  Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation.  Joy  at  the  close  of  the  war.  A 
little  of  the  story  of  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin  may  be  help- 
ful in  nlaking  the  children  feel  admiration  and  sym- 
pathy for  the  slaves,  and  the  necessity  of  their  being 
set  free. 

QXft. — Peas-laying.  Form  of  beauty. — Connect 
with  the  Capitol  by  copying  some  detail  in  architect- 
ure, pavement  or  carving  which  may  be  shown  in  a 
picture  of  the  exterior  or  interior  of  the  building. 

Occupation. — Paste  chains  with  which  to  decorate 
Lincoln's  picture — symbolic  of  the  chains  which  he 
removed  from  his  fellow  man. 

Games. — It  is  very  inspiring  to  the  children  to 
dramatize  the  life  of  Lincoln  in  the  simpler  phases  of 
his  career.  Generally  these  are  the  principal  games 
during  the  four  days  allotted  to  the  study  of  his  life. 
The  children  come  to  have  a  genuine  love  for  him, 
and  to  feel  that  to  be  worthy  of  their  country  they 
must  be  like  him  in  character.  (Show  portrait  of  Lin- 
coln during  the  morning  talk.) 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME      5 

In  order  that  we  may  realize  how  widely  this 
programme  deviates  from  Froebelian  aims  and 
methods,  let  us  imagine  that  a  pioneer  of  the 
kindergarten  movement,  withdrawn  by  untoward 
causes  from  knowledge  of  passing  events  in  the 
educational  world,  is  making  her  first  visit  to  a 
kindergarten  after  an  absence  of  many  years. 
With  a  shock  of  surprise  she  becomes  aware  that 
nearly  the  whole  of  the  first  brisk  morning  hour 
is  given  up  to  story  and  talk.  She  recalls  the 
missionary  zeal  with  which  she  hurled  at  ancient 
school  methods  her  revolutionary  insight  that 
"  play  is  the  point  of  departure  for  education  be- 

I ,  cause  it  is  self-active  representation  of  the  inner 
life  from  inner  necessity  and  impulse."  She  re- 
members the  changes  rung  upon  this  insistent 
theme ;  the  fine  scorn  with  which  kindergartners 

^  inveighed  against  "  pouring  into  the  child  "  ;  their 
fervent  confessions  of  that  prime  article  of  faith, 
"^  "  the  doer  is  the  ancestor  of  the  learner  " ;  their 
triumphant  proclamations  of  the  truth  that  "  man, 
^  made  in  the  image  of  his -Crealor,  must  from  the 
beginning  of  life  be  conceived  and  treated  as  a  cre- 
ative being."  Yet  here  are  sixty  children  sitting 
around  a  circle  doing  nothing,  and  one  grown-up 
person  pouring  out  herself  and  pouring  into  them. 
What  has  been  happening  during  those  years  of 
her  enforced  seclusion  ?  Is  the  kindergarten  tot- 
tering and  are  its  very  foundations  giving  way? 


6  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

At  last  the  morning  talk  is  over,  and  the  chil- 
dren, seated  at  tables,  are  ready  to  begin  building. 
The  pioneer's  heart  beats  with  fresh  hope.  Mem- 
ories of  the  delight  of  her  own  little  ones  in  their 
freely  created  forms  revive  in  her  mind,  and  she 
waits  with  eagerness  for  the  moment  when  each 
child  before  her  shall  give  sign  through  his  prod- 
uct of  what  is  passing  within  him.  But  the  spirit 
of  Seventy-six  is  dead  in  the  kindergarten  of 
Ninety-six,  and  twenty  children  mechanically  fol- 
low the  directions  for  making  a  "  half-face  camp," 
Abraham's  four  favorite  books,  his  flatboat,  the 
fireplace  by  which  he  worked,  and  the  table  at 
which  he  wrote  letters.  The  exercise  drags  through 
its  weary  length  to  its  end,  and  it  is  time  to  march 
to  the  circle.  The  delight  of  old-time  ball  games 
and  jolly  races  stirs  in  our  pioneer's  veins;  pic- 
tures of  children  who  seemed  really  transformed 
into  birds  and  butterflies  crowd  the  canvas  of 
memory ;  busy  farmers,  millers,  carpenters,  wheel- 
wrights pass  in  gay  panorama  before  the  eye  of 
imagination.  But  all  these  images  of  the  past 
vanish  as  she  turns  her  attention  forcibly  to  the 
actual  circle  upon  which  little  victims  of  the  con- 
centric programme  are  dramatizing  the  life  of 
Lincoln.  By  the  time  the  dreary  drama  is  over, 
our  veteran  is  prepared  for  the  worst,  watches 
almost  without  inner  protest  the  cutting  and  past- 
ing of  shovels,  and  listens  with  chastened  and  sub- 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME       7 

dued  amazement  to  the  still  outpouring  director 
who,  intent  upon  filling  children's  minds  with  a 
"  thought  mass,"  and  pointing  its  moral,  dilates 
upon  "  Lincoln's  faithfulness  in  doing  difficult 
tasks,  and  encourages  her  little  pupils  to  emulate 
his  example." 

Our  pioneer  kindergartner  must  make  a  heroic 
wrestle  with  "  many  thoughts  of  many  men  "  be- 
fore she  can  appreciate  the  conspiring  influences 
whose  outcome  she  has  beheld  in  the  revolutionized 
kindergarten.  For  the  moment  we  dismiss  her  to 
a  struggle  which  we,  too,  shall  make  in  sequent 
chapters  of  this  book.  Our  immediate  purpose 
is  to  form  some  fair  judgment  of  the  concentric 
programme,  and/this  involves  an  effort  to  discrim- 
inate between  defects  due  to  its  constructive  prin-  'n 
ciple,^efects  incident  to  the  perversion^-pf  educa- 
tional ideals  in  themselves  correct,  and  defects  due 
to  lack  of  individual  wisdom  with  regard  to  sub- 
jects which  may  be  profitably  presented  to  the 
minds  of  little  children.  ]S[o  theory  of  education 
may  be  blamed  for  the  attempt  to  suggest  to  chil- 
dren between  the  ages  of  four  and  six  the  causes 
of  our  Civil  War;  and  not  the  concentric  ideal, 
but  the  bad  judgment  of  the  kindergartner  is  re- 
sponsible for  the  effort  to  thrill  infant  hearts  with 
the  Emancipation  Proclamation.  The  Froebelian 
doctrine  of  symbolism  is  not  impugned  by  its  piti- 
ful perversion  in  the  exercise  "  of  pasting  chains 


8  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

with  which  to  decorate  Lincoln's  picture — sym- 
bolic of  the  chains  which  he  removed  from  his 
fellow  man."  On  the  other  hand,  the  programme 
cited  has  four  marked  defects  arising  from  its 
constructive  principle  and  common  to  all  pro- 
grammes of  its  type.  The  first  of  these  defects 
is  the  assumed  priority  of  conscious  thought  over 
impulse  and  activity ;  the  second  is  the  imposition 
of  an  externally  unified  whole  of  thought;  the 
i-third  is  the  sacrifice  of  specific  values  in  exercises 
with  the  gifts  and  occupations,  and  the  fourth  is 
the  substitution  of  arbitrary  connections  for  those 
causal  ties  which  it  is  one  great  aim  of  all  sound 
education  to  reveal. 

What  becomes  of  that  cardinal  principle  of  pro- 
gressive pedagogy  that  "  in  the  beginning  is  the 
act,"  if  children  may  not  act  until  their  minds 
have  been  filled  by  the  kindergartner  with  a 
thought  content?  What  becomes  of  originality 
when  every  detail  of  every  exercise  is  planned  and 
prescribed?  How  shall  each  gift  be  so  used  as  to 
throw  into  relief  its  own  specific  quality  if  all 
exercises  must  illustrate  some  chosen  theme? 
Finally,  what  are  we  doing  for  a  human  mind 
when  we  respond  to  its  yearning  for  the  dis- 
covery of  causal  ties  by  such  pitiful  exercises  as 
"  an  effort  to  connect  with  the  capital  through 
copying  some  detail  in  architecture,  paving,  or 
carving  ? " 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME      9 

The  programme  cited  is  one  of  the  earlier  em- 
bodiments of  the  concentric  ideal.  It  is  the  hybrid 
product  of  a  mixed  marriage  between  Froebelian 
instrumentalities  and  non-Froebelian  aims  and 
methods.  Its  author  is,  however,  serenely  un- 
aware of  the  antagonistic  ideas  arming  for  war 
"  below  the  threshold  of  her  consciousness."  To 
us,  on  the  contrary,  it  should  now  be  evident  that 
the  aim  of  this  programme  is  instruction  and  its 
method  an  attempted  unification  of  many  distinct 
exercises  through  their  connection  with  a  concen- 
tration center.  Later  and  more  conscious  efforts 
to  realize  this  aim  and  carry  out  this  method  have 
resulted  in  a  protracted  struggle  of  varying  for- 
tunes. Instinct  with  their  own  creative  purpose, 
the  Froebelian  gifts,  games,  and  occupations  have 
proved  recalcitrant  to  the  yoke  of  foreign  and 
tyrannical  ideas.  Hence,  wherever  traditional 
school  aims  and  concentric  methods  have  prevailed 
it  has  been  found  necessary  to  eliminate  many 
of  Froebel's  gifts  and  occupations,  exclude  num- 
bers of  his  games,  and  discard  some  of  his  most 
characteristic  types  of  exercise.  The  result  of 
such  eliminations,  exclusions,  and  rejections  is  that 
the  kindergarten  loses  its  distinctive  merit  and  the 
Froebelian  instrumentalities  cease  to  be  an  or- 
ganic whole  through  the  active  use  of  whose  related 
elements  the  child  organizes  his  own  thought,  feel- 
ing, and  will. 


10  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

Scores  of  concentric  programmes  have  been  cre- 
ated by  kindergartners,  and  their  themes  have 
been  as  varied  as  the  mental  proclivities  of  their 
creators.  The  exercises  of  different  kindergart- 
ens have  circled  and  whirled  around  Hiawatha; 
around  the  Seven  Little  Sisters;  around  selected 
Mother  Plays;  around  Mother  Goose  rhymes; 
around  pine  trees,  water,  and  potatoes,  and  finally 
incited  by  the  suggestion  of  Dr.  Hall  that  "  in 
the  nearness  of  children  to  animals  there  is  a  rich 
but  undiscovered  silo  of  educational  possibilities," 
they  have  been  set  to  gyrating  around  our  furred 
and  feathered  brethren  of  forest  and  field.  What- 
ever the  subject  chosen  as  core  of  concentration 
the  results  of  the  method  have  been  the  same. 
The  specific  value  of  each  form  of  material  has 
been  destroyed ;  the  sane  and  healthy  balance  of 
the  games  has  been  lost ;  gifts  have  been  hopelessly 
mixed  or  recklessly  discarded;  forms  of  knowl- 
edge have  been  eliminated ;  forms  of  beauty  min- 
imized to  a  vanishing  point;  fortuitous  connec- 
tions have  taken  the  place  of  causal  ties;  sym- 
bolism has  been  scouted  and  flouted;  originality 
has  been  sapped  and  the  apperceptive  mass  of  the 
kindergartner  ruthlessly  imposed  upon  the  minds 
of  her  pupils.  Surely  this  procedure  does  what 
education  should  not  do  and  leaves  undone  what 
it  should  do.  i 

It  may  be  said  that  as  it  exists  in  the  kinder- 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME      11 

garten  the  concentric  programme  is  not  the  out- 
come of  a  conscious  attempt  to  apply  the  prin- 
ciples of  any  plan  of  education,  but  is  simply  a 
method  of  procedure  spread  by  contagion  from 
higher  grades  of  school  work.  It  may  also  be 
urged  that  any  fair  attack  upon  the  concentric 
method  should  be  directed  against  its  theoretic 
presentation  and  practical  illustration  by  the  edu- 
cators who  are  responsible  for  its  existence  and 
extension.  Admitting  the  force  of  this  chal- 
lenge, I  shall  endeavor  to  meet  it  as  directly  as 
possible. 

It  is  matter  of  familiar  knowledge  that  the 
pedigree  of  programmes  of  the  type  I  have  been 
describing  traces  back  to  the  Ziller-Rein  sojuool  of 
Herbartian  educators.  It  is  also  quite  generally 
recognized  that  the  theoretic  basis  of  such  pro- 
grammes is  that  principle  of  concentration  which 
demands  the  connection  of  every  exercise  with  a 
Gesinnungs-Stoff  or  matter  appealing  to  sentiment 
and  imagination.  This  unifying  core  is  selected 
from  culture  products  belonging  to  successive 
periods  of  race  development  which  it  is  claimed 
repeat  themselves  in  the  developpient  of  each  indi- 
vidual, and  it  must  possess  an  ethical  value  whose 
extraction  and  application  is  the  goal  of  concen- 
tric exercises.  Obviously  the  crucial  question  is 
that  of  concentration,  for  if  the  principle  of  con- 
centration be  proved  untenable,  it  is  superfluous 


12  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

to  consider  any  criterion  for  the  selection  of  con- 
centration material.^ 

The  following  general  programme,  which  Dr. 
De  Garmo  quotes  from  Dr.  Rein,  will  illustrate 
the  application  of  the  principle  of  concentration 
to  the  first  year  of  school  work.^ 

!1.  Core  of  Concentration  \  Drawing,  Singing,  Num- 
>     ber,      Reading,     and 
2.  Nature-Study  '      Writing. 

1.  Ethical  Core  of  Concentration  (Gesinnungs- 
8toff) ;  Grimm's  Fairy  Tales.  These  form  the  center, 
or  core,  of  instruction.  The  other  branches  are  con- 
centrated about  them;  and  by  them  the  remaining 
topics  are  largely  determined. 

2.  Nature-Study. — All  the  subjects  that  are  sug- 
gested by  the  Fairy  Tales,  receiving  a  special  illumi- 
nation from  them  and  thereby  awakening  an  intensi- 
fied interest,  are  first  chosen  for  treatment.  School 
life  and  individual  experience  furnish  much  supple- 
mentary matter.     (See  list  of  object  lessons   below.) 

3.  Drawing. — For  this  purpose  the  objects  men- 
tioned in  the  Fairy  Tales  and  in  the  nature-study  are 
used. 

'  For  discussions  of  this  subject,  see  Introduction  to  Her- 
bart's  Science  and  Practice  of  Education,  by  Henry  M.  and 
Emmie  Felkin,  pp.  121-154,  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.— Ufer's 
Pedagogy  of  Herbart,  pp.  54-104,  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. — Ap- 
perception, Lange,  pp.  109-151,  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. — Herbart 
and  the  Herbartians,  De  Garmo,  pp.  101-165,  Charles  Scrib- 
ner's  Sons. 

•  Herbart  and  the  Herbartians,  De  Garmo,  pp.  143-144. 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME      13 

4.  Singing. — The  choice  of  songs  is  determined  by 
the  moods  developed  by  instruction  and  by  school  life. 
The  various  songs  must  express  emotion  at  fitting 
times. 

5.  Number  Work. — This  is  connected  closely  with 
the  things  that  are  considered  in  the  various  culture 
and  nature  subjects. 

6.  Reading  and  Writing. — The  material  is  chosen 
from  the  topics  treated  during  instruction  in  Fairy 
Tales  and  Nature-Study. 

It  is  admitted  by  candid  Herbartians  that  the 
most  formidable  difficulty  confronting  the  concen- 
tric programme  is  the  fusion  of  subjects  which 
have  no  natural  affinity  in  a  single  apperceptive 
mass.  Experience  would  seem  to  indicate  that 
this  difficulty  is  not  only  formidable  but  insur- 
mountable. As  an  example  of  what  I  am  forced 
to  call  the  absurdities  into  which  the  concentric 
methods  betrays  its  votaries,  I  quote  an  illustra- 
tive lesson  on  the  Treatment  of  the  Number  Three 
by  Dr.  Karl  Just  Altenburg,  in  which  the  ven- 
turesome attempt  is  made  to  seek  in  a  fairy  tale 
an  appealing  point  of  departure  for  an  arithmetic 
lesson. 

AIM 

How  many  persons  were  in  the  home  of  the  little 
girl   of   Sternthal    (first  fairy   tale)    when  her  father^ 
and  mother  were  yet  alive  ?^^.,^^^^,^  tn^t^Cy^i*^^*^ 

Clearness  (analysis  and  synthesis).— ^here  was  first 


14  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

her  father  (1)  then  her  mother  (1  +  1)  and  then 
the  good  little  girl  (2  + 1).  Together  there  were 
therefore  three. 

But  now  her  father  died  (3  —  1)  and  there  were 
left  mother  and  daughter;  then  her  mother  died,  too 
(2  —  1)  and  the  little  girl  was  left  alone.  At  last  the 
little  girl  went  away  (1  —  1)  and  there  was  nobody 
left  in  the  house/ 

It  is  self-evident  that  no  child  will  learn  any- 
thing from  this  exercise  which  he  did  not  already 
know.  Waiving,  however,  the  question  of  its 
futility  and  forbearing  all  comment  upon  its 
method,  which  blindly  assumes  that  because  num- 
bers are  small,  complicated  analyses  and  syntheses 
are  easy,  I  will  only  ask  whether  any  person  can 
believe  for  a  moment  that  a  fairy  tale  will  seize 
more  strongly  upon  imagination  or  that  its  ethical 
import  will  be  more  readily  distilled  because  of 
the  attempt  to  make  it  a  medium  for  teaching 
arithmetic,  and,  conversely,  whether  the  number 
three  will  appeal  more  sympathetically  to  the 
heart  of  childhood  because  of  its  lugubrious  asso- 
ciation with  the  death  of  a  father  and  mother  and 
the  wandering  of  a  forlorn  orphan. 

That  arithmetic  is  not  the  only  study  which 
refuses  to  blend  in  a  pleasing  penumbra  around  a 

'  Pedagogy  of  Herbart,  Ufer,  p.  121.  I  have  cited  only 
that  portion  of  the  lesson  which  connects  the  nmuber  three 
with  the  fairy  tale. 


THE  CONCENTRIC    PROGRAMME  15 

literary  core  of  consciousness  will  be  apparent  to 
any  reader  who  will  study  carefully  the  following 
concentric  programme  for  children  of  the  first 
grade.  ^ 

FIRST   GRADE 

Literature. — The  Fir  Tree,  Andersen, 

Science. — (a)  White  Pine  as  a  type  of  eyergreens, 
since  it  is  more  common  here  than  any  other  ever- 
green tree. 

(b)  Austrian  Pine. 

(c)  Scotch  Pine. 

(d)  Norway  Spruce. 

(e)  Balsam  Fir. 

Reading. — "A  Pine  Twig"  and  "Story  of  a  Pine 
Tree,"  in  Nature  Stories  for  Young  Readers,  Also 
sentences  on  the  board  taken  from  the  Science  and 
Literature  work,  like  those  immediately  following: 

Written  Language:  Sentences  based  on  Literature, 
thus: 

The  fir  tree  lived  in  the  forest. 

It  was  not  happy. 

It  wished  to  be  tall. 

A  little  rabbit  sometimes  jumped  over  the  tree. 

This  made  the  tree  ashamed. 

Or  based  on  Science,  thus: 

The  fir  tree  is  green  all  winter. 

Sometimes  the  snow  covers  it. 

Then  it  is  a  white  tree. 

The  snow  does  not  break  the  limbs.  They  bend 
down, 

>  Cited  from  Dr.   Frank  McMurray  in  Herbart  and  the 
Herbartians,  De  Garmo,  p.  123. 
4 


16  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

See  how  they  are  fastened  into  the  trunk. 

I  cannot  break  off  the  twigs. 

Writing. — (All  the  small  letters  this  year.) 

If  the  children  are  ready  to  study  r,  take  the  words 
fir,  rahhit,  green,  tree. 

If  some  other  letter  should  be  studied,  similar 
groups  of  words  bearing  on  the  study  of  the  fir  will 
suggest  themselves  to  the  teacher. 

Drawing. — (a)  Drawing  of  pines  and  firs,  with  col- 
ored chalk  or  crayon. 

(fe)  Drawing,  and  sewing  in  perforated  board,  of 
evergreen  trees,  of  cones,  and  of  rabbit. 

(c)  Moulding — trunk  of  evergreen,  tub  in  which  it 
was  placed,  toys  that  adorned  it. 

(d)  Drawing  of  different  scenes  in  the  story,  as  of 
woodcutters  hauling  the  trees  from  the  forest,  etc. 

(a,  h,  c,  are  from  Science,  d  is  from  Literature.) 

Number. — Number  of  needles  in  a  bundle  of  White, 
Scotch,  or  Austrian  pine;  in  two  bundles  of  White 
pine;  in  two,  four,  five  of  Scotch  or  Austrian  pine. 

Number  of  wings  on  two,  three,  etc.,  seeds. 

Number  of  pairs  of  legs  on  rabbit. 

Number  of  wheels  on  wagon  that  hauled  the  tree 
away. 

How  many  span  of. horses? 

Music. — "  High  in  the  Top  of  an  old  Pine  Tree." 

Poems. — "  Pine  Needles." 

"  The  Little  Fir  Trees." 

«  The  Pine  Tree's  Secret." 

The  most  interesting  feature  of  this  programme 
is  its  attempt  to  derive  science  lessons  and  con- 
structive work  from  a  story.  That  the  attempt 
results  in  fortmtous  connections  is  manifest,  and 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME      17 

were  the  programme  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  an 
intelligent  person  unfamiliar  with  the  theory  of 
concentration  it  would  doubtless  inspire  a  ques- 
tion why  any  external  or  arbitrary  association  of 
ideas  should  be  thrust  upon  or  insinuated  into  the 
minds  of  pupils  by  teachers.  To  this  question  two 
answers  might  suggest  themselves.  The  first  is 
that  some  natural  distaste  of  children  for  con- 
structive work,  drawing,  modeling,  counting,  the 
observation  of  natural  objects  and  other  kinder- 
garten and  school  exercises  needs  to  be  overcome, 
while  the  second  may  hold  that  the  native  interest 
of  children  in  these  specific  forms  of  activity 
should  be  utilized  to  make  selected  themes  pre- 
potent as  determiners  of  the  neural  associations 
through  which  a  preferred  apperceptive  mass  may 
be  created  and  a  desired  type  of  character  formed. 
No  intelligent  person  would  halt  long  over  the 
first  answer,  for  it  is  impossible  to  believe  in  the 
implied  absence  or  weakness  of  the  constructive 
and  classifying  instincts,  or  admit  the  lack  of 
that  eager  curiosity  to  test  objects  by  the  five 
senses,  which  is  the  bud  of  the  higher  intellectual 
powers.  Professor  James  tells  us  "  that  up  to 
the  eighth  or  ninth  year  of  childhood  one  may 
say  the  child  does  hardly  anything  else  than  han- 
V^le  objects,  explore  things  with  his  hands,  doing 
and  undoing,  setting  up  and  knocking  down,  put- 
ting together  and  pulling  apart,"  and  that  "  con- 


18  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

struction  and  destruction  are  really  two  names  for 
one  activity,  for  both  signify  the  production  of 
change  and  the  working  of  effects  in  outward 
things."  The  child's  delight  in  drawing,  model- 
ing, and  cutting  is  an  expression  of  this  inborn 
constructive  instinct,  which  being  itself  a  stimu- 
lus does  not  need  stimulating.  The  desire  to 
count  springs  spontaneously  out  of  the  impulse 
to  classify,  or,  as  Froebel  puts  it,  "  In  the  devel- 
opment of  number  ideas  we  have  an  illustration 
in  what  manner  and  by  what  laws  the  child 
ascends  from  the  perception  of  individual  things 
to  the  more  general  and  the  most  general  con- 
cepts." Finally,  it  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted 
upon  that  children  are  curious  about  the  qualities 
of  objects  in  and  for  themselves,  loving  the  shapes, 
groupings,  colors,  and  odors  of  external  things, 
just  as  they  love  "  the  softness  of  mud,  the  wet- 
ness of  water,  and  the  magnificent  soapiness  of 
soap."  It  would  seem,  therefore,  an  act  of 
supererogation  to  set  a  child's  thoughts  gyrating 
around  the  story  of  the  fir  tree  in  order  to 
beguile  him  into  counting  its  needles,  sewing  its 
cones,  modeling  the  tub  in  which  it  is  placed, 
or  drawing  the  rabbit  who  occasionally  jumps 
over  it. 

Forced  to  reject  the  first  horn  of  our  dilemma, 
let  us  examine  the  second,  and  ask  ourselves 
whether,  granting  the  native   and   absorbing  in- 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME     19 

terest  of  children  in  material  qualities,  in  group- 
ing and  counting  things,  in  making  and  breaking 
things,  we  may  and  should  utilize  these  interests 
to  give  certain  ethical  ideals  concretely  embodied 
in  stories  sovereignty  over  the  imagination.  In 
other  words,  if  we  do  not  need  the  story  of  the 
fir  tree  to  induce  children  to  count,  cut,  sew,  draw, 
model,  and  curiously  observe,  do  we  need  count- 
ing, drawing,  modeling,  sewing,  and  observation 
exercises  to  create  around  the  story  a  retinue  of 
attendant  ideas  which,  adding  to  its  pomp  and 
dignity,  will  intensify  its  appeal  to  imagination  ? 

It  is  only  necessary  to  put  this  question  clearly 
to  realize  that  any  eifort  of  the  kind  described 
must  be  an  abortive  one  for  the  simple  reason 
that  nothing  so  sets  a  mind  against  any  subject 
as  perpetually  harping  upon  it.  The  healthy 
subjection  of  every  normal  child  to  the  power 
of  contrary  suggestion  would  make  the  little  vic- 
tim who  was  bidden  to  draw  the  fir  tree,  sew 
its  cones,  count  its  needles,  model  its  tub,  and 
study  the  letter  r  in  /ir,  rabbit,  green,  and 
tree,  hate  the  persistent  evergreen  with  all  his 
heart  and  soul  and  might,  and  refuse  to  be  recon- 
ciled to  it  even  when  decked  in  its  Christmas 
glory. 

From  practical  programmes  based  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  concentration  we  must  now  hasten  to  con- 
sider defects  inherent  in  the  principle  itself.     Its 


20  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

most  obvious  error,  as  has  been  already  suggested, 
is  the  assumption  that  mutually  repellent  subjects 
may  be  fused  in  a  single  apperceptive  mass.  The 
educators  who  are  responsible  for  enthroning  this 
principle  would  seem  not  to  have  laid  sufficiently 
to  heart  Herbart's  division  of  instruction  "  into 
two  main  lines,  the  one  for  understanding,  the 
other  for  feeling  and  imagination."  In  this 
division  he  clearly  recognizes  an  important  differ- 
ence between  scientific  and  liumane  studies.  De- 
fining this  difference  more  closely  we  become  aware 
of  a  momentous  contrast  between  physical  nature 
and  human  nature,  and  realize  that  science  and  the 
humanities  must  differ  in  tlieir  aim  and  method, 
in  tlie  forms  of  mental  activity  to  which  they 
appeal,  in  the  convictions  to  which  they  give 
birth,  in  the  practical  solutions  of  social  problems 
which  they  suggest,  and  in  the  "  emotional  under- 
tones "  which  they  create. 

It  is  a  suggestive  remark  of  Professor  Huxley 
that  the  one  act  of  faith  in  the  convert  to  science 
is  "  the  confession  of  the  universality  of  order 
and  of  the  absolute  validity  at  all  times  and  under 
all  circumstances  of  the  law  of  causation."  The 
discovery  of  causes  and  the  reduction  of  these 
causes  to  an  interrelated  system  is  the  confessed 
aim  of  science.  Hence  the  distinctive  method  of 
science  is  experimental ;  the  form  of  mental  activ- 
ity to  which  it  makes  preponderant  appeal  is  the 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME  21 

understanding;  the  conviction  to  which  it  gives 
birth  is  that  all  particular  facts  are  explainable 
through  the  totality  of  existent  and  precedent 
conditions;  the  plans  which  it  suggests  for  the 
betterment  of  human  nature  are  based  upon  the 
improvement  of  conditions,  and  the  emotional 
undertone  which  it  creates  is  one  which  inclines 
toward  fatalism  and  pessimism.  Studies  relating 
to  human  nature,  on  the  contrary,  presuppose  not 
the  law  of  causation,  but  the  principle  of  freedom ; 
the  method  for  which  they  call  is  that  of  in- 
trospection in  its  ascending  degrees;  the  forms 
of  mental  activity  to  which  they  appeal  are 
imagination,  conscience,  reason,  and  rational 
will;  the  goal  toward  which  they  point  is  not  the 
conception  of  a  fated  universe,  but  of  an  infinite 
community  of  free  beings  who  have  learned  so 
to  think  and  act  that  self-activity  never  defeats 
its  own  divine  nature;  the  plans  for  uplifting 
humanity  which  they  inspire  are  plans  whose 
accent  is  upon  education,  and  the  emotional 
undertone  which  they  create  is  one  of  energetic 
optimism. 

No  thoughtful  person  will  deny  that  human- 
istic and  scientific  studies  complement  each  other, 
and  that  both  are  necessary  to  insure  sanity  of 
intellect,  poise  of  feeling,  and  rationality  of  act. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  would  seem  self-evident 
that   between    studies   that   cannot   realize   their 


22  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

own  aim,  cannot  follow  their  own  method,  and 
cannot  reach  their  own  goal  without  abso- 
lutely contradicting  each  other,  the  chasm  is  too 
great  to  be  bridged  bj  any  plan  of  concentric 
education. 

In  his  Talks  to  Teachers,  Professor  James  re- 
marks that  "  the  best  possible  sort  of  system  into 
which  to  weave  an  object  mentally  is  a  rational 
system  or  science."  "  Place  the  thing,"  he  con- 
tinues, "  in  a  classificatory  series ;  explain  it  log- 
ically by  its  causes,  and  deduce  from  it  its  neces- 
sary effects;  find  out  of  what  natural  law  it  is  an 
instance,  and  you  then  know  it  in  the  best  of  all 
possible  ways."  "  If  you  know  a  law,"  he  adds, 
"  you  may  discharge  your  memory  of  masses  of 
particular  instances,  for  the  law  will  reproduce 
them  for  you  whenever  you  require  them,"  and 
he  concludes  that  a  "  philosophic  system  in  whick 
all  things  were  connected  together  as  causes  and 
effects  would  be  the  perfect  mnemonic  system  in 
w^hich  the  greatest  economy  of  means  would  bring 
about  the  greatest  richness  of  results."  This  state- 
ment is  an  illuminating  exposition  of  that  phase 
of  education  which  relates  to  the  teaching  of  all 
branches  of  science.  Scientific  subjects  should 
from  the  beginning  of  education  be  presented 
with  constant  reference  to  the  discovery  of  causal 
v^rocesses.  On  the  other  hand,  all  the  studies 
which,  like  literature,  art,  and  history,  are  expres- 


THE  CONCENTRIC   PROGRAMME  23 

sions  of  the  free  human  spirit,  should  be  so  pre- 
sented as  to  quicken  that  appreciative  power  to 
which  and  through  which  alone  their  value  is  re- 
vealed. As  the  pupil  matures  he  should  retrace 
ascending  and  widening  circles  of  causal  activity 
and  should  create  in  himself  ascending  and  in- 
creasing circles  of  intellectual  and  emotional  ap- 
preciation. The  reader  who  understands  this 
statement  knows  the  difference  between  concentric 
and  vortical  education  and  holds  the  clew  to -one 
great  contrast  between  the  principles  and  practice 
of  Froebel  and  that  of  the  educators  who  are  re- 
sponsible for  the  promulgation  and  application  of 
the  principle  of  concentration. 

Xot  only  are  the  distinctive  values  of  science 
and  the  humanities  lost  through  efforts  to  relate 
them  to  a  common  center,  but  special  sciences  and  . 
special  groups  of  the  humane  studies  require  to 
be  differently  presented  in  order  that  their  prin- 
ciple may  be  grasped,  their  revelation  understood, 
their  gift  of  power  appropriated,  and  the  par- 
ticular form  of  mental  energy  to  which  they 
appeal  called  into  exercise.  These  truths  are  so 
important  and  so  little  understood  that  I  may 
not  shun  the  effort  to  throw  upon  them  some 
little  light. 

Nature  studies  fall  into  two  groups,  one  of 
which  includes  mathematics  and  physics,  the  other 
botany   and   zoology.      Physics   and  mathematics 


24  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

are  related  as  body  and  soul,  or,  in  other  words, 
mathematics  is  the  animating  principle  of  phys- 
ics. The  revelation  of  this  group  of  studies  is 
a  universe  of  quantitatively  related  forces;  the 
mathematical  gift  of  power  is  theoretical  and 
practical  mastery  of  inorganic  nature,  for  whether 
man  digs  a  cellar,  builds  a  house,  invents  a  ma- 
chine, computes  the  motions  of  bodies,  or  meas- 
ures relations  of  force  he  must  use  mathematics 
as  his  instrument.  Finally,  mathematics  calls 
forth  and  disciplines  that  form  of  mental  activity 
which,  abstracting  from  the  differences  of  objects, 
learns  to  think  a  world  of  magnitude.  It  is  there- 
fore one  step  of  withdrawal  from  sense  perception 
and  one  step  of  that  mastery  of  thought  through 
which  mind  ascends  to  higher  knowledge  of  the 
world. 

Passing  from  the  first  to  the  second  group  of 
nature-studies  we  discard  the  principle  of  mathe- 
matics in  favor  of  the  principle  of  life.  Life  is 
a  formative  activity  related  to  an  environment 
which  it  modifies  and  to  which  it  adapts  itself. 
The  revelation  of  the  biologic  sciences  is  an  or- 
ganically related  universe  and  an  evolutionary 
ascent  of  being;  their  gift  of .  power  to  man  is 
ability  to  improve  plants,  animals,  and  his  own 
physical  structure;  and,  finally,  by  training  the 
understanding  to  think  relations  of  reciprocal  de- 
pendence they  hasten  the  ascent  of  mind  from  the 


THE  CONCENTRIC   PROGRAMME  25 

conception   of   phenomenal  to   that  of   noumenal 
being.  * 

When  we  turn  from  nature  studies  to  humane 
studies  we  leave  behind  us  a  realm  of  fate  and 
enter  a  realm  of  freedom.  The  last  word  of  the 
physical  sciences  is  that  each  thing  is  made  what 
it  is  through  the  totality  of  existent  and  precedent 
conditions.     The  first  word  of  literature,  art,  and 

v^  history  is  that  man  is  a  free  being,  able  "  to  set 
aside  internally  and  externally  the  stream  of 
causation  in  which  he  finds  himself."     Potential  i 

^^reedom  becomes  actual  freedom  through  social ' 
combination.  The  subject  matter  of  history,  lit-  , 
erature,  and  art  is  the  relationship  of  human 
freedom  to  human  solidarity.  History  reveals 
the  growth  of  freedom  in  the  state.  It  records 
an  advance  from  governments  in  which  only  the 
ruler  is  free,  "  and  even  he  has  only  the  semblance 
of  freedom,"  through  oligarchies  wherein  the  few 

»  In  the  elementary  course  of  the  school  the  introduction 
to  both  physics  and  biology  is  made  through  geography. 
Says  Dr.  Harris:  "Through  the  geographical  window  of  the 
soul  the  survey  extends  to  organic  and  inorganic  nature. 
The  surface  of  the  earth,  its  concrete  relations  to  man  as  his 
habitat  and  as  the  producer  of  his  food,  clothing,  and  shelter, 
and  the  means  of  intercommunication  which  unite  the  de- 
tached fragments  of  humanity  into  one  grand  man,  all  these 
important  matters  are  introduced  to  the  pupil  through  the 
study  of  geography  and  spread  out  as  a  panorama  before  the 
second  window  of  the  soul." — Psychologic  Foundations  of 
Education,  p.  322. 


M  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

are  free  and  the  many  slaves,  to  governments 
which  increasingly  aim  to  make  all  men  free  by 
guaranteeing  to  each  man  participation  in  the 
governing  power  and  qualifying  him  through  edu- 
cation for  the  responsibility  with  which  this  par- 
ticipation invests  him.  Literature  and  art  search 
out  all  the  actions  which  reenforce  man's  power 
to  participate  with  his  fellows  and  all  the  actions 
which,  on  the  contrary,  destroy  or  minimize  this 
power,  and  by  presenting  both  types  of  action  in 
the  form  of  concrete  examples  illuminate  imagi- 
nation with  ethical  ideals.     In  brief  epitome,  the 

(principle  of  history,  literature,  and  art  is  rational 
freedom,  and  their  revelation  is  liberty  realized  in 
and  through  social  combination.  But  while  at  one 
in  their  principle  and  their  revelation,  they  differ 
in  their  gift  of  power  and  in  the  form  of  mental 
energy  to  which  they  make  preponderant  appeal. 
Literature  and  art  allure  imagination  by  a  con- 

y^crete  presentation  of  the  beautiful  in  conduct  and 
in  life,  and  confer  as  their  gift  of  power  a  sensi- 
tively discriminating  taste.  History  challenges 
the  individual  to  moral  choices  through  concrete 
definition  of  the  form  of  will  as  realized  in  cor- 
porate action,  and  confers  as  its  guerdon  the  gift 
of  a  self -directing  conscience.^ 

'  Readers  familiar  with  Psychologic  Foundations  of  Educa- 
tion will  recognize  that  in  the  past  few  pages  I  have  closely 
followed  its  statements.     Readers  not  familiar  with  this  book 


THE  CONCENTRIC  PROGRAMME      27 

The  gist  of  the  argument  presented  against  the 
theory  of  concentration  is  that  in  so  far  as  this 
theory  prevails  it  attacks  both  the  objective  and 
subjective  value  of  every  branch  of  study.  In  its 
practical  application  it  forces  the  substitution  of 
arbitrary  and  contingent  connections  for  causal 
relations  and  attacks  literary  appreciation  by 
using  stories  as  "  cores  of  concentration  "  for  all 
sorts  of  exercises. 

During  Alice's  sojourn  in  Wonderland  she  ven- 
tured to  remark  that  "  the  earth  takes  twenty- 
four  hours  to  revolve  on  its  axis."  "  Talking  of 
axes,"  rejoined  the  Duchess,  "  chop  off  her  head." 
This  experience  is  a  somewhat  startling  example 
of  the  dangers  incident  to  the  merely  accidental 
or  external  association  of  ideas.  To  such  fortui- 
tous association  we  are  all  by  nature  prone.  To 
deliver  us  from  this  sin  of  unregenerate  intellect 
is  one  chief  duty  of  education.  By  substituting 
causal  for  contingent  connections  science  discloses 
to  intellect  the  unity  of  the  world  and  increases 
the  possibility  of  communion  between  man  and 
man.  By  deflecting  intellect  from  the  search  for 
causes,  and  creating  more  or  less  contingent  ap- 

and  interested  in  the  question  of  educational  values  should 
study  carefully  Chapter  XXXIV  Psychology  of  the  Course 
of  Study  in  Schools,  Elementary,  Secondary,  and  Higher.  I 
have  omitted  all  reference  to  grammar  and  the  studies  allied 
to  it  because  they  have  no  direct  bearing  upon  the  activities 
of  the  kindergarten. 


28  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

perceptive  masses,  concentric  instruction,  could  it 
succeed,  would  create  a  bias  of  mind  unfavorable 
to  the  grasp  of  the  universe  as  a  related  whole 
and  would  defeat  the  struggle  of  men  toward  a 
unitary  humanity. 

By  substituting  sympathetic  appreciation  of 
rational  ideals  for  native  prejudices  literature 
contributes  even  more  largely  than  science  toward 
that  creation  of  mankind  out  of  men  which  is  the 
inner  spring  of  all  human  striving.  Nothing  so 
isolates  one  man  from  another  or  one  race  from 
another  as  different  prejudices.  These  alienating 
and  antagonizing  prejudices  are  aborigines  of  our 
minds.  They  are  opinions  formed  in  the  under- 
world of  instinct.  Some  are  products  of  heredity, 
some  of  environment,  and  some  of  individual  ex- 
perience. All  of  them  are  tinged  and  many  of 
them  deeply  dyed  with  emotion.  They  are  defiant 
of  coercion  and  invincible  by  logic.  They  are 
tyrants  of  the  mind,  and  their  tyranny  can  be 
overthrown  only  as  rational  ideals,  marching  in 
the  valiant  and  beautiful  forms  of  literature,  cap- 
ture and  forever  after  hold  the  citadel  of  phan- 
tasy. When  children  all  over  the  world  listen  to 
those  nursery  rhymes  and  fairy  stories  in  which 
the  elementary  traits  of  the  race  mind  are  re- 
vealed; when  boyhood  all  over  the  world  yields 
itself  in  glad  surrender  to  classic  myth  and 
Bible  story;  and  when  the  spirit  of  youth  every- 


THE  CONCENTRIC   PROGRAMME  29 

where  receives  the  baptismal  regeneration  of  the 
great  world  poets,  then  indeed  shall  the  individ- 
ual soul  be  enfranchised  and  all  antagonistic 
nations  be  fused  in  one  jubilant  and  victorious 
humanity. 

The  principle  of  concentration  claims  to  be 
rooted  in  the  doctrine  of  apperception  as  explained 
^/by  Herbart.  This  explanation  has  two  psycho- 
logic defects,  of  which  the  first  is  the  assumed 
primacy  of  conscious  intellect  over  feeling  and 
volition.**^  uith  Herbart,"  says  Lange,  "  apper- 
ception was  confined  chiefly  to  such  cases  in  which 
the  acquisition  of  the  new  is  preceded  by  excita- 
tion of  the  circle  of  thought,  that  is,  a  contem- 
plative lingering  observation,  an  arching  and 
pointing  of  concepts."  ^  Herbart  himself  affirms 
that  "  the  circle  of  thought  contains  the  store  of 
that  which  by  degrees  can  mount  by  the  steps  of 
interest  to  desire,  then  by  means  of  action  to  voli- 
tion." -  This  attempt  "  to  derive  all  psychical 
processes,  especially  the  subjective  feelings,  im- 
pulses, and  desires,  from  ideas  and  intellectual 
processes  "  ^  is  repudiated  by  later  psychologists 
and  educators,  and  it  is  now  quite  generally  ad- 
mitted that  "  the  forces  which  in  the  act  of  apper- 

>  Apperception,  Lange  (Eng.  tr.),  p.  267. 
'  Science  of  Education,  Herbart.     Translation  by  Henry  M. 
and  Emmie  Felkin,  p.  213. 

» Outlines  of  Psychology,  Wundt,  p.  13. 


80  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

ceiving  awaken  and  guide  the  masses  of  ideas  are 
the  secret  powers  of  the  emotional  soul "  (Ge- 
miith).^  With  this  decision  contemporary  psy- 
chology reaffirms  the  insight  of  Froebel  "  that  the 
center,  the  real  foundation,  the  starting  point  of 
human  development,  and  thus  of  the  child's  de- 
velopment, is  the  heart."  ^  In  this  insight  is 
rooted  the  educational  method  of  Froebel,  which 
proceeds  from  the  assumption  that  in  typical  facts 
>^resented  originally  as  typical  acts  resides  the 
apperceiving  energy  which  unifies  experience  and 
forms  character.  Goethe  tells  us  that  flour  can- 
not be  sown  and  seed  com  ought  not  to  be  ground. 
The  defect  of  concentric  education  is  that  it 
attempts  to  sow  flour.  The  merit  of  the  kinder- 
garten, as  I  hope  to  show  hereafter,  is  that  it 
evolves  all  the  values  of  thought  and  life  from 
the  seed  corn  of  the  typical  deed. 

The  second  psychologic  fallacy  embalmed  in 
the  method  of  the  concentric  programme  is  the 
proposition  that  "  *  presentations  '  (Vorstellungen) 
are  the  elements  of  mental  life,  and  their  combi- 
nations, permutations,  and  interactions  cause  all 

•  Apperception,  Lange,  p.  268. 

2  Pedagogics  of  the  Kindergarten,  p.  42.  The  German 
original  is  clearer  in  its  statement  "dasz  der  Mittelpunkt,  die 
eigentliche  Grundlage,  der  Ausgangspunkt  der  Menschlichen 
und  so  der  Kindesbildung  das  Gemiith  und  die  Gemiithliche 
sei." — Pddagogik  des  Kindergartens,  p.  33.  See  Symbolic 
Education,  p.  247. 


THE  CONCENTRIC   PROGRAMME  31 

the  rest  of  the  manifold  forms  of  consciousness."  * 
Concentric  instruction  is  really  a  form  of  educa- 
tional atomism.  Scientific  atomism  may  emphasize 
either  the  independence  of  each  atom  in  the  atomic 
infinitude  or  the  processes  of  composition  and  de- 
composition through  which  it  essays  to  explain 
the  actual  world.  In  like  manner  educational 
atomism  may  put  its  stress  either  upon  sensations 
as  the  original  elements  of  mind  or  upon  the  asso- 
ciative processes  through  which  sensations  are 
supposed  to  be  combined  into  percepts  and  per- 
cepts blended  in  those  composite  mental  photo- 
graphs which  are  all  that  psychologic  atomism 
discerns  in  concepts  or  general  ideas.  Rousseau 
and  Pestalozzi  are  atomic  psychologists  and  edu- 
cators of  the  former  type.^  Herbart  and  his  dis- 
ciples are  atomic  psychologists  and  educators  of 
the  latter  type.  "  The  object  of  synthetical  in- 
struction," writes  Herbart,  "  is  twofold ;  it  must 
supply  the  elements  and  prepare  their  combina- 
tion." ^  The  idea  of  relativity  is  apperceivingly 
active  in  his  mind,  whereas  it  had  not  attained 
threshold  value  in  the  minds  of  his  predecessors. 
Froebel  discards  psychologic  and  educational  at- 
omism in  both  its  earlier  and  its  later  form.     He 


•  The    Science    of    Education,    Herbart.     Translated    by- 
Henry  M.  and  Emmie  Felkin.     Translators'  Preface,  p.  33. 

•  See  Symbolic  Education,  Chapter  I. 

•  Felkin's  Translation,  as  above,  p.  159. 

5 


32  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

conceives  of  mind  as  an  aboriginal  energy  seeking 
expression  in  deeds,  and  through  deeds  interpret- 
ing both  itself  and  the  world.  In  the  structure 
of  mind  he  discovers  the  key  to  education,  and  he 
must  always  be  revered  as  the  originator  of  that 
higher  pedagogy  whose  initial  insight  is  the  deep 
meaning  which  lies  hid  in  childish  play,  and 
whose  triumphant  achievement  is  a  path  which, 
issuing  from  play,  makes  swift  and  joyous  ascent 
toward  a  true  world  view  and  a  conforming  life. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE    FROEBELIAN    ANTITHESIS 

The  Froebelian  antithesis  to  concentric  educa- 
tion is  vortical  education.  The  point  of  departure 
for  vortical  education  is  the  typical  fact  What 
thought  masses  are  to  the  Herbartian,  typical 
tacts  are  to  the  Froebelian,  and  without  clear 
comprehension  of  what  is  meant  by  a  typical  fact 
it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  practice  of  the 
historic  kindergarten. 

(1.)  Let  us  approach  the  meaning  of  a  typical 
fact  by  asking  ourselves  what  we  mean  by  any 
fact.  Do  we  mean  a  single  point  of  experience 
taken  in  detachment  from  the  line  it  begins  or 
ends?  If  so,  we  are  thinking  of  something  that 
does  not  exist.  Each  thing  is  what  it  is  because 
of  its  relations  to  all  other  things.  Therefore,  to 
know  any  object  or  event  apart  from  its  relations 
is  not  to  know  it  at  all.  To  know  it  in  some  of  its 
relations  is  to  grasp  it  as  a  relative  synthesis.  To 
set  it  in  the  totality  of  its  relations  is  to  convert 
this  partial  synthesis  into  an  absolute  synthesis. 
We  may  see  a  mere  point  of  fact;  we  may  see  an 

33 


34  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

arc  of  fact;  we  may  see  a  semicirciimference,  a 
circle,  or  a  spiral  of  fact;  we  may  see  a  vortical 
ascent  and  expansion  of  fact;  or,  finally,  we  may 
see  a  spherical  totality  of  fact. 

Thus  far  we  have  only  discussed  ascending  defi- 
nitions of  a  fact,  and  from  our  present  point  of 
view  should  relegate  all  adequate  apprehension  of 
facts  to  the  period  of  maturity,  leaving  for  child- 
hood those  detached  unrealities  which  we  know 
as  sense  objects  and  isolated  events.  We  should 
hold  that  children  must  live  in  an  atomic  world 
and  should  deride  the  idea  of  quickening  in  infant 
minds  any  prescient  sense  of  the  ties  by  which 
objects  are  related  and  events  bound  together. 
But  what  if  among  the  objects  of  sense-perception 
there  are  some  which  provoke  surmises  of  rela- 
tions and  principles  ?  What  if  life  and  literature 
offer  types  of  character  w^hich  reveal  not  mere 
points  but  arcs  on  the  circle  of  rationality? 
What  if  the  heart  of  childhood  thrills  with  pro- 
phetic intimations  of  all  master  truths?  What, 
■  above  all,  if  the  human  mind  ascends  to  insight, 
not  through  fusing  many  single  sensations  into 
those  apperceptive  masses  we  call  sense  objects, 
and  forming  from  images  of  these  objects  the 
composite  pictures  we  call  general  ideas,  but  by 
a  series  of  effluxes  of  the  mind  itself  and  the  im- 
position of  its  native  forms  upon  the  objective 
data  of  experience? 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  35 

Dwelling  in  thought  upon  these  possible  alter- 
natives, a  new  pedagogy  begins  to  define  itself, 
and  the  questions  emerge  whether  the  most  uni- 
versal truths  have  not  always  been  first  discerned 
under  the  disguise  of  concrete  examples,  and 
whether  the  one  great  object  of  early  education 
should  not  be  to  select  and  present  those  visible 
embodiments  of  creative  principles  which  may  be 
approximately  classified  as  typical  facts,  objects, 
actions,  characters,  relations,  and  processes.  At 
the  heart  of  each  valid  synthesis  of  facts  works 
the  force  which,  raying  out  in  all  directions,  gen- 
erates the  spherical  whole.  A  typical  fact  is  one 
which  stirs  in  the  prescient  imagination  at  least 
a  vague  awareness  of  this  generative  force. 

(2.)  It  was  through  the  spur  of  a  typical  fact 
that  the  mind  of  Darwin  was  incited  to  ask  the 
question  which  he  answered  in  his  theory  of  evo- 
lution. The  animals  of  the  Galapagos  islands 
resemble  species  found  in  South  America.  They 
have  been  modified  through  a  process  of  adapta- 
tion to  insular  conditions.  No  continental  species 
are  represented  save  those  which  could  by  some 
means  have  crossed  the  intervening  sea.  Such 
similarities  under  different  conditions,  such  modi- 
fications and  such  exclusions  constitute  in  their 
totality  a  typical  fact  illustrating  very  completely 
the  general  thesis  that  different  species  of  plants 
and  animals  have  been  produced  through  modifica- 


36  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

tions  of  a  common  ancestral  stock  by  adaptation 
to  differing  environments.  This  typical  fact  was 
the  lighted  match  which,  falling  into  a  combustible 
mind,  produced  that  great  conflagration  of  intel- 
lect in  which  the  doctrine  of  a  special  creation  of 
plants  and  animals  was  burned  to  ashes.  It  also 
kindled  that  brighter  light  which  made  possible 
the  vision  of  nature  as  an  evolutionary  ascent  of 
being.* 

The  course  of  history  suggests  that  the  initial 
point  of  every  line  of  human  progress  has  been 
some  typical  fact.  It  was  a  typical  presentation 
of  the  three  great  mysteries  of  life — illness,  old 
age,  and  death — that  drove  Sakya  Muni  to  those 
years  of  contemplation  whose  outcome  was  the 
great  religion  of  the  Orient.  It  was  through  a 
typical  fact,  the  Cross  of  Calvary,  that  occidental 
humanity  received  the  revelation  of  a  self-sacri- 
ficing God.  The  falling  apple  was  the  immediate 
provocative  of  Newton's  theory  of  gravitation 
whose  issue  is  a  related  as  opposed  to  an  atomic 
universe,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  the  fauna  of  a 
group  of  small  islands  spurred  the  mind  of  Dar- 
win to  that  formidable  wrestle  with  nature,  whose 
outcome  has  been  the  greatest  revolution  ever 
wrought  in  human  conceptions  of  God,  man  and 

'  Origin  of  Species,  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  1871,  p.  362.  See 
also  Darwin  and  After  Darwin,  Romanes,  Open  Court  Pub- 
lishing Co.,  Chicago,  p.  237. 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  37 

the  world.  Such  typical  facts  are  thought- 
points  as  opposed  to  thought  masses.  They  bear 
no  resemblance,  however,  to  the  mathematical  ab- 
straction, but  are  like  the  germinating  point  in 
which  a  vital  force  begins  its  process  of  self -organ- 
izing activity. 

y/'CS.)  Typical  facts  appeal  to  imagination,  and 
through  imagination  to  feeling  and  will.  Froe- 
bel's  insistence  upon  them  declares  his  recognition 
of  imagination  as  the  predominant  form  of  men- 
tal activity  between  the  ages  of  four  and  six.  His 
genius,  however,  also  divined  a  deeper  truth,  and 
he  perceived  that,  in  view  of  the  young  child's 
primary  and  persistent  need  for  a  self-expressive 
activity,  typical  facts  must  be  presented  in  the 
guise  of  typical  acts.  Seizing,  therefore,  upon 
instinctive  games,  he  charged  them  with  ideal 
values,  and  by  getting  children  to  play  with  typ- 
ical objects  and  represent  typical  characters,  rela- 
tions, and  processes,  he  made  the  first  complete 
educational  conquest  of  that  realm  of  phantasy  in 
which  all  young  souls  dwell.  His  creative  thought 
may  be  summed  up  in  a  very  few  sentences.  Since 
children  spend  their  lives  in  a  waking  dream,  edu- 
cation must  so  influence  them  that  their  dreams 
shall  be  prophecies  of  truth.  Since  their  waking 
dream  is  an  active  drama,  the  form  through  which 
prevenient  imagination  must  seize  upon  truth  is 
the  typical  deed.     What  a  child  does  he  tends  to 


38  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

behold.  What  he  plays  he  is,  he  tends  to  become. 
Through  creating  in  play  an  ideal  world  he  will 
be  prepared  for  an  ideal  interpretation  of  the 
actual  world.  Representing  in  play  an  ideal  self, 
he  will  be  incited  to  that  self-surrender  and  self- 
conquest  whose  goal  is  self-fulfillment. 

As  its  name  implies  and  its  practice  siiggests, 
the  concentric  programme  is  intent  upon  forming 
in  the  mind  a  circle  of  thought.  In  discussing 
this  programme  I  pointed  out  that  the  psychology 
it  presupposes  makes  interest,  desire,  and  volition 
derivative  from  conscious  thought.  The  psychol- 
ogy implied  in  the  traditional  procedure  of  the 
kindergarten  traces  the  pedigree  of  conscious 
thought  back  to  interest  and  desire,  expressing 
themselves  in  act  and  becoming  aware  of  them- 
selves through  seeing  their  image  in  deeds.  Froe- 
bel's  insistent  plea  is  that  within  typical  deeds 
resides  the  apperceiving  energy  which  will  direct 
and  unify  thought.  His  only  core  of  unity  is  the 
child  himself  conceived  as  self-creative,  and  there- 
fore as  possessing  germinal  tendencies  toward  all 
the  values  of  adult  life  which  are  in  reality  ap- 
proximate definitions  of  self -activity.  The  method 
of  the  kindergarten  which  is  rooted  in  this  con- 
ception of  the  child  may  be  most  briefly  described 
as  an  attempt  to  aid  these  native  tendencies  to  find 
their  outlet  in  ascending  spirals  of  expression, 
which  upon  each  successively  attained  plane  of  de- 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  39 

velopment  merge  in  a  larger  spherical  unity  of 
thought,  feeling,  and  will. 

(4.)  The  typical  facts,  or,  as  I  may  now  amend 
my  statement,  the  typical  acts  of  the  kindergarten, 
include  varied  play  with  typical  objects  and  varied 
representation  of  typical  characters,  relationships, 
and  processes.  The  greater  number  of  criticisms 
made  against  the  kindergarten  have  been  leveled 
at  the  gifts  or  typical  objects  and  have  owed  their 
sting  to  two  popular  misconceptions.  It  has  been 
supposed  that  the  gifts  were  intended  to  supply 
material  for  object  lessons,  and  it  has  been  tacitly 
or  explicitly  assumed  that  the  purpose  of  these 
object  lessons  was  to  assist  children  to  arrive  at 
certain  general  concepts  of  form  through  the 
processes  of  comparison,  abstraction,  and  general- 
ization. 

Most  of  the  arguments  urged  against  the  gifts 
before  the  advent  of  the  free-play  heresy  may  be 
condensed  into  the  statement  that  being  geomet- 
ric solids  and  planes  they  divert  the  tendency  of 
the  mind  to  compare  concrete  things  with  each 
other,  and  prompt  rather  the  comparison  of  type 
forms  with  individuals,  which  is  unnatural.  It 
is  said,  for  example,  that  a  child  should  compare 
a  plum  and  an  apple,  or  an  apple  and  an  orange, 
and  not  either  of  these  fruits  with  a  perfect  sphere. 
The  rejoinder  is  apt,  that  since  the  orange  and 
apple  resemble  each  other  because  both  resemble 


40  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

a  sphere,  the  very  first  comparison  between  them 
must  either  elicit  the  typical  form  or  float  in  the 
vague.  But  all  conscious  comparison  between  an 
orange  and  an  apple  or  between  either  fruit  and 
a  sphere  is  foreign  to  children  four  and  five  years 
old,  and  the  kindergarten  has  no  mandate  to  call 
into  premature  exercise  any  form  of  mental  ac- 
tivity. The  spheres  of  the  kindergarten  are  balls 
which  children  roll,  bounce,  toss,  catch,  whirl,  and 
spin;  the  cubes  are  blocks  with  which  they  build; 
the  squares,  triangles,  sticks,  and  rings  are  not 
geometric  polygons  and  lines,  but  materials  for 
making  pictures.  In  a  word  all  these  type  forms 
are  primarily  playthings,  and  Froebel's  simple 
contention  is  that  playing  with  them  concentrates 
attention  on  them  and  thereby  makes  them  pre- 
potent in  the  selection  and  organization  of  ex- 
perience. The  selective  interest  of  a  baby  brought 
up  by  hand  singles  out  bottles  from  among  all 
the  objects  of  nature  and  art  and  devotes  to  them 
his  absorbed  attention.  This  is  because  bottles 
are  intimately  connected  with  his  most  appealing 
and  engrossing  experience.  For  precisely  the 
same  reason  the  kindergarten  child  whose  balls 
and  blocks  are  connected  with  plays  which  have 
given  him  keen  enjoyment  singles  out  of  the  con- 
fusion of  sense  presentation  objects  allied  to  these 
typical  forms.  And  since,  unlike  bottles,  geomet- 
ric archetypes  are  really  the  keys  to  all  form,  the 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  41 

direction  of  attention  to  them  means  a  valid  clas- 
sification of  primary  elements  of  experience. 

It  is  a  superficial  grasp  of  Froebel's  purpose  in 
making  "  the  archetypes  of  nature  the  playthings 
of  the  child  "  to  suppose  that  what  he  expected 
from  their  use  was  merely  that  children  should  see 
all  around  them  spheres,  cubes,  cylinders,  pyra- 
mids, and  prisms.  This  would  be  analogous  to  the 
supposition  that  we  learn  the  alphabet  in  order  to 
reduce  all  the  sentences  and  words  of  books  to 
their  component  letters.  The  truth  is  that  pre- 
cisely as  we  learn  the  phonetic  alphabet,  in  order 
to  get  at  the  sense  of  what  is  written  in  books,  so 
we  learn  the  alphabet  of  form,  in  order  to  get  at 
the  sense  of  what  is  written  in  the  great  book  of 
nature,  and  in  order  to  write  correctly,  and  if  it 
may  be  with  beauty,  the  language  of  the  graphic 
pictorial  and  plastic  arts. 

(5.)  It  is  a  well-known  fact  that  the  first  search 
for  an  alphabet  of  sense-perception  was  made  by 
Pestalozzi,  and  that  its  outcome  was  his  famous 
doctrine  of  form,  number,  and  language.  Froebel 
perceived  that  the  alphabet  offered  by  Pestalozzi 
would  not  enable  children  to  spell  out  all  the  words 
in  sense-perception,  and  he  has  provided  in  the 
kindergarten  gifts,  occupations  and  games  more 
or  less  satisfactory  alphabets  of  savor,  odor,  mus- 
cular movement,  color,  and  musical  sound.  Rec- 
ognizing,  however,  that  only  through  form   can 


42  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

we  adequately  classify  different  kinds  of  objects, 
and  adequately  distinguish  between  objects  of  the 
same  kind,  he  placed  the  accent  of  the  kinder- 
garten gifts  upon  an  alphabet  of  form  which  is 
likewise  an  alphabet  of  size  and  number.  "  Spe- 
cific life,"  he  writes,  "  shows  itself  in  specific 
structures  conditioned  by  form  and  size.  Form 
again,  manifests  its  nature  in  the  systematic  ar- 
rangement or  articulation  of  its  component  parts; 
size  shows  itself  in  its  divisions.  Both  size  and 
form  have  multiplicity  and  divisibility,  hence 
both  imply  and  depend  upon  number."  ^ 

The  archetypes  of  form  have  meanings  of  their 
own  which  we  must  learn  to  translate  if  we  would 
understand  what  nature  is  trying  to  say  to  us. 
And  as  we  learn  to  understand  a  foreign  language 
through  practice  in  speaking  it,  so  we  learn  to 
translate  the  language  of  form  through  its  experi- 
mental and  creative  use.  Will  not  children  who 
have  rolled  balls  and  cylinders  on  level  and  in- 
clined planes,  who  have  tipped  cubes  and  made 
them  slide,  and  who  have  whirled  and  spun 
spheres,  cubes,  cylinders,  and  cones  be  prepared 
for  appreciation  of  those  relations  between  form 
and  motion  which  are  fundamental  facts  of 
physics?  Will  not  the  axial  divisions  of  spheres, 
cubes,  cylinders,  and  cones  made  familiar  through 
the  building  gifts,  peas-work,  and  modeling,  pre- 

Pedagogics  of  the  Kindergarten,  p.  199. 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  43 

pare  for  a  more  intelligent  grasp  of  crystalline 
forms  ?  Will  not  the  kindergarten  child  enter 
more  s}Tnpathetically  than  other  children  into 
nature's  reason  for  giving  flowers  cylindrical 
stems  and  animals  cylindrical  legs  ?  Will  he 
not  better  appreciate  "  the  appropriateness  of 
cylindric  forms  for  carriers  of  food  and  work- 
ing supplies,  for  roots  of  trees  and  veins  of  ani- 
mals, for  drinking  and  breathing  tubes  through 
out  the  animal  and  vegetable  world  ?  "  ^  Will  not 
the  varied  exercises  throwing  into  relief  the  free- 
dom of  the  sphere  from  bristling  edges  and  prick- 
ing corners,  lead  nascent  thought  to  seal  with  intel- 
ligent approval  nature's  choice  of  spheroidal  forms 
for  the  heads  of  men  and  animals,  and  for  fruits, 
vegetables,  flowers,  and  seed  ?  Will  not  the  twirl- 
ing plays  wherein  all  forms  lose  their  angles  and 
approximate  to  spheres  give  some  clew  to  the  ac- 
tivities through  which  pebbles  are  rounded  and 
worlds  shaped  ?  In  short,  will  not  wisely  directed 
play  with  archetypal  forms  gently  lead  little 
neophytes  of  thought  out  of  the  realm  of  na- 
ture's effects  into  the  realm  of  her  causative 
processes  ? 

(6.)  Passing  from  the  scientific  to  the  aesthetic 
interpretation  of  the  world,  let  us  remind  our- 
selves that  ideal  art  is  never  an  external  copy  of 

•  The  Study  of  Type  Forms  and  Its  Value  in  Education, 
John  S.  Clark.     Prang  Educational  Co. 


44  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

nature,  but  a  reaction  of  the  mind  against  nature. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  seize  nature's  living  energies 
rather  than  their  dead  results,  and  its  advance  is 
marked  by  increasing  ability  to  express  generic 
ideals.  It  has  been  said  that  "  the  superiority 
of  Japanese  paintings  of  flowers  is  due  to  a  per- 
fect memory  of  certain  flower  shapes  instantane- 
ously flung  upon  paper  and  showing  not  the  rec- 
ollection of  any  individual  blossom,  but  the  perfect 
realization  of  a  general  law  of  form  expression, 
perfectly  mastered  with  all  its  moods,  tenses, 
and  inflections."  ^  The  Japanese  artist  has  en- 
tered into  nature's  creative  act,  and  through 
knowledge  of  and  sympathy  with  certain  generic 
forms  of  expression  he  produces  individual  ex- 
amples of  a  common  type  superior  to  the  individu- 
al examples  of  nature  herself.  Astir  within  him 
is  the  ideal  toward  which  the  Iris  or  Chrysanthe- 
mum or  Lotus  energy  in  nature  aims,  and  there- 
fore he  is  able  to  fling  freely  upon  paper  original 
images  of  this  ideal.  In  like  manner  the  eye  of 
ancient  Greece  was  fixed  not  upon  the  imperfect 
achievements,  but  upon  the  ideal  striving  of  the 
man-making  energy,  and  through  her  interior 
vision  she  was  able  to  reveal  to  dwarfed  and  dis- 
torted humanity  the  grandeur  and  beauty  to 
which  it  might  dare  aspire.  Sublime  Zeus  and 
gracious   Aphrodite,  statues  of  heroic  Ares  and 

•  Out  of  the  East,  Lafcadio  Hearn,  p.  119. 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  45 

chaste  Artemis  defined  great  arcs  on  the  circle  of 
the  ideal  human  and  made  men  aware  how  divine 
is  that  spirit  which  is  forever  seeking  incarnation 
in  human  form.  In  brief,  the  ideal  reproduction 
of  nature  implies  assimilation  of  various  forms 
of  creative  energy. 

Refusing  to  copy  nature's  products  the  artist 
seeks  communion  with  her  spirit  and  participa- 
tion in  her  generative  processes.  Like  the  scien- 
tist he  withdraws  from  the  visible  realm  of  effects 
into  the  invisible  realm  of  causes.  He  will  not 
be  fettered  by  nature's  defective  embodiment  of 
her  ideals,  but  recreating  these  ideals  in  his  own 
soul  he  gains  power  to  recreate  them  in  the  world, 
and  thus  makes  himself  nature's  highest  instru- 
ment and  her  most  complete  interpreter.  He 
turns  from  visible  light  to  behold  "  the  light  that 
never  was  on  sea  or  shore."  He  looks  away  from 
the  rose  "  which  his  eye  externally  doth  see,"  to 
the  archetypal  rose  which  from  all  eternity  "  has 
blossomed  in  the  mind  of  God,"  and  declining 
to  recognize  in  men  as  they  are  the  ideal  of 
manhood,  he  defines  that  ideal  itself  by  the  in- 
clusion in  a  single  form  of  many  scattered  excel- 
lences, and  by  accentuating  the  excellences  sep- 
arately discerned. 

(7.)  Manifestly,  the  selection  of  scattered  ex- 
cellences implies  a  criterion  of  taste.  All  peoples 
have   some   standard    in   accordance   with    which 


46  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

they  choose  types  of  beauty,  and  if  the  art  of 
Greece  surpasses  that  of  other  nations,  it  must 
be  because  of  the  superior  truth  of  her  selective 
idea.  Greece  conceived  both  gods  and  men  as  free 
beings,  or  original  sources  of  self-activity.  To 
her  mind  self-activity  was  alike  the  final  cause 
and  ultimate  goal  of  life,  and  therefore  the  visible 
expression  of  freedom,  whether  in  the  resilient 
poise  of  sitting  figures,  in  the  unhasting  and  un- 
impeded energy  of  moving  figures,  or  in  that 
serenity  of  expression  which  is  the  outward  sign 
of  inner  collectedness,  and  self-mastery  was  to  her 
consciousness  beautiful.  Defining  truth  as  self- 
activity  she  beheld  "  in  the  shining  of  self -activ- 
ity "  the  "  splendor  of  the  true."  Insight  into 
the  heart  of  Greece  inspires  the  words  which 
Swinburne,  speaking  in  her  name,  addresses  to 
Mother  Nature  in  his  Litany  of  the  Nations: 

I  am  she  that  made  thee  lovely  with  my  beauty 

From  north  to  south, 
Mine  the  fairest  lips  took  first  the  fire  of  duty 

From  thine  own  mouth. 
Mine  the  fairest  eyes  sought  first  thy  laws  and  knew 
them 

Truths  undefiled; 
Mine  the  fairest  hands  took  freedom  first  into  them 

A  weanling  child. 

The  "  subordination  of  reality  to  the  ideal "  is 
characteristic  of  all  high  expression  of  the  human 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  47 

spirit.  Literature  and  art  "  translate  the  inner 
meanings  of  nature  and  human  life."  Literature 
translates  these  meanings  through  words;  art 
translates  them  through  forms.  Literature  must 
seize  upon  the  word  and  art  upon  the  form  or  line 
that  expresses  each  shade  of  meaning  with  the 
greatest  clarity,  precision,  comprehensiveness, 
and  sympathetic  appeal.  Understanding  that  the 
distinctive  feature  of  ideal  art  is  the  adequate 
representation  of  generic  types,  we  are  able  to  de- 
fine another  value  of  play  with  type  forms.  It 
has  long  been  admitted  that  since  the  more  specific 
forms  of  nature  are  all  allied  to  geometric  arche- 
types, their  characteristic  marks  will  be  more 
readily  seized  when  these  archetypes  are  known. 
As  Mr,  Clark  puts  it  in  his  valuable  monograph 
on  The  Study  of  Type  Forms,  "  In  sketching 
from  nature  unaided  by  a  study  of  the  types, 
there  is  almost  invariably  an  obliviousness  to  the 
proportion  of  surfaces  and  lines  and  an  insensi- 
bility to  differences  in  the  essential  character  of 
circular,  elliptical,  or  oval  curves.  Therefore,  con- 
crete objects  are  falsely  represented."  When  to 
such  defect  of  observation  we  add  defect  of  feel- 
ing or  failure  to  appreciate  the  appeal  of  forms  to 
sensibility  the  ideal  interpretation  of  nature  be- 
comes impossible,  and  art  reduces  itself  to  mere 
mechanical  copy  of  her  external  aspect.  Speak- 
ing of  emotional  analogies  in  relation  to  form 
6 

i>lAl£NOJ<M/iLSCiiyUL= 


48  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Wolfflin  says :  "  A  line  composed  of  short,  deli- 
cate curves  is  commonly  called  tremulous,  while 
one  with  wider  and  shallower  vibrations  indicates 
dull  humming  or  buzzing.  A  zigzag  rustles  and 
splashes  like  falling  water,  and  when  very  pointed 
sounds  shrill  like  a  whistle.  The  straight  line  is 
quite  still ;  in  architecture  it  suggests  the  "  quiet 
simplicity  of  the  antique."  ^  All  kinds  of  forms, 
the  rectangular,  the  spherical,  the  cylindrical,  the 
ovoidal — all  kinds  of  lines,  vertical,  horizontal, 
oblique,  circular,  elliptical,  spiral,  vortical — are 
instinct  with  purpose  and  charged  with  emotion. 
The  artist  must  enter  into  their  purpose  and  re- 
spond to  their  emotional  suggestion  if  he  aspires 
to  interpret  nature's  energies  instead  of  being 
fettered  and  bound  by  nature's  products.  With- 
out knowledge  of  archetypal  forms  he  cannot  see 
nature  correctly.  Without  feeling  for  archetypal 
forms  he  cannot  interpret  nature  sympathetically. 
Without  using  archetypal  forms  and  lines  crea- 
tively he  cannot  attain  to  true  knowledge  or  sym- 
pathetic appreciation  of  them,  for  man  knows 
only  what  he  does,  and  feels  only  what  he  ex- 
presses. It  would  seem,  therefore,  indisputable 
that  free  sport  with  archetypal  forms  and  lines 
must  be  the  terminus  ah  quo  of  that  ideal  repro- 
duction of  nature  which  "  plays  with  convention- 
alized form  and  subordinates  reality  to  it." 
>  Cited  by  Karl  Groos  in  Play  of  Man,  p,  65. 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  49 

(8.)  With  this  insight  we  return  once  more  to 
the  procreant  idea  of  the  kindergarten.  The  child 
can  penetrate  the  purpose  and  respond  to  the  emo- 
tional suggestion  of  forms  only  as  he  uses  them 
creatively.  His  play  stirs  within  him  some  dim 
prescience  of  the  repose  of  the  straight  line,  the 
self-fulfillment  of  the  circular  curve,  the  aspira- 
tion of  the  spiral,  the  exhilaration  of  vortical  as- 
cent and  expansion.  Again,  through  these  special 
forms  of  creative  activity  his  attention  will  be  di- 
rected to  the  expression  of  analogous  activities  in 
nature  and  some  suspicion  of  their  purpose  will 
be  quickened  within  him.  In  brief,  what  a  child 
*^oes  has  a  determining  reaction  upon  what  he 
thinks  and  feels.  What  he  thinks  and  feels  de- 
termines his  selective  interest,  and  his  selective 
interest  determines  which  among  the  many  in- 
fluences streaming  toward  him  shall  be  welcomed 
by  his  mind  and  become  the  materials  out  of 
which  he  builds  his  world. 

To  assimilate  the  generic  energies  of  nature 
and  give  them  more  perfect  expression  is  a 
transcendent  achievement.  By  itself,  however, 
this  achievement  is  not  art.  The  distinctive 
principle  of  art  is  order,  and  under  this  general 
idea  are  included  "  rh;yi;hm,  measure,  proportion, 
and  all  those  modes  of  arrangement  used  by  artists 
which    may  be    summarized    as    composition."  ^ 

>  The  Fine  Arts,  G.  Baldwin  Brown,  p.  10. 


50  *  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

This  principle  of  order  is  man's  free  gift,  the  ad- 
dition of  something  in  himself  to  what  he  receives 
from  nature.  "  Animals  run  and  caper ;  man 
regulates  the  run  and  caper  by  the  principle  of 
order  and  creates  the  dance.  Birds  ^  utter  suc- 
cessive notes  pleasing  to  the  ear,'  man  adds  the 
element  of  ordered  time  and  creates  music. 
Apes  delight  in  imitative  gesture,  man  rises  from 
mere  imitation  to  the  mimic  dance  and  thence  to 
the  drama.  Many  animals  '  delight  in  color  and 
glitter  and  enjoy  bright  and  tinted  objects.'  Man 
alone  spaces  objects  at  intervals  and  thus  creates 
decorative  art.  Animals  show  constructive  abil- 
ity and  build  not  only  for  purposes  of  utility 
but  from  motives  of  pleasure  and  display.  Man 
seeks  to  embody  in  his  constructions  the  prin- 
ciples of  proportion,  and  thus  creates  architectural 
beauty."  ^     If  to-day 

"  Earth  proudly  wears  the  Parthenon, 
As  the  best  gem  upon  her  zone," 

it  is  because  man  has  been  able  to  create  a  beauty 
for  which  nature  furnishes  no  original.  It  is  true 
that  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  believes  animal  shapes 
may  have  suggested  the  general  form  of  Greek 
temples.     The  suggestion  seems  forced,  but  even 

*  These  illustrations  are  condensed  from  the  book  already 
referred  to,  The  Fine  Arts,  G.  Baldwin  Brown.  See  pp.  1-18. 
I  put  the  whole  passage  in  quotations  because  the  idea  is 
borrowed  even  where  the  words  are  changed. 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS'  51 

granting  it  validity,  it  is  a  far  cry  from  the 
poodle  to  the  Parthenon.  Whatever  indeed  may 
have  been  the  original  suggestion  of  nature,  it  had 
been  long  outgrown  when  the  Acropolis  was 
crowned  with  this  miracle  of  architectural  gran- 
deur and  loveliness.  The  artist  who  conceived 
this  perfect  temple  was  no  copyist  of  nature,  but 
a  higher  incarnation  of  natura  naturans,  and 
the  consummate  beauty  which  he  called  into  being 
was  the  outcome  "  of  a  long  historic  striving  after 
proportion,  after  a  satisfactory  division  of  a  whole 
into  parts,  after  a  rhythmical  interchange  of  form 
and  void."  * 

(9.)  In  order  to  appreciate  great  works  of  art, 
as  well  as  in  order  to  become  in  any  degree  an 
artist  himself,  the  individual  must  not  only  know 
theoretically  the  principles  governing  composi- 
tion, but  must  have  that  spontaneous  emotional 
accord  with  them  which  we  call  good  taste.  Such 
spontaneity  of  sympathetic  comprehension  is  best 
achieved  by  practice  in  composing.  Children 
should  therefore  be  led  to  create  beauty  of  pro- 
portion and  since  proportion  inheres  in  and  is 
most  simply  created  with  geometric  elements, 
practice  in  the  grouping  and  spacing  of  different 
kinds  of  lines  and  in  the  symmetric  cutting  of  dif- 
ferent polygons  would  seem  to  be  the  true  meth- 
od of  initiation  into  the  arts  of  space. 

»  The  Fine  Arts,  p.  16. 


52  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

If  this  conclusion  be  accepted  it  will  become 
evident  that  play  with  type  forms  has  a  second  ar- 
tistic value.  It  not  only  aids  the  mind  to  dis- 
cern those  generic  energies  whose  more  perfect 
expression  creates  the  substance  of  art,  but  it  also 
hastens  the  discovery  of  those  principles  of 
rhythm,  measure,  and  proportion  which  create  the 
form  of  art,  and  which,  proceeding  as  they  do 
from  the  spirit  of  man,  reveal  the  structure  of  in- 
telligence.^ 

(10.)  Thus  far  we  have  considered  the  kinder- 
garten gifts  only  in  their  more  obvious  aspect  as 
a  series  of  typical  objects  through  whose  creative 
use  the  child  learns  to  spell  out  the  primary  mean- 
ings of  form  and  to  appreciate  the  elements  of 
artistic  order.  That  Froebel  expected  other  re- 
sults from  the  plays  he  suggests  with  these  typi- 
cal objects  is  evident  from  his  own  insistent  and 
reiterated  statements  of  his  aims  and  purposes. 
The  following  passages  suggest  a  point  of  view 
which  the  perusal  of  his  books  will  abundantly 
confirm : 

I  have  not  only  forms  for  the  child's  eyes  which 
are  to  make  him  acquainted  with  the  outward  world 

>  See  Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  pp.  352-59. 
I  have  omitted  all  reference  to  the  value  of  play  with  type 
forms  as  related  to  Manual  Training  and  Constructive  In- 
dustry because  this  vahie  has  been  so  often  pointed  out.  See 
the  monograph  already  referred  to,  The  Study  of  Type  Forms 
and  Its  Value  jn  Education,  pp.  21-23. 


THE  FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  53 

which  surrounds  him;  I  have  symbols  which  unlock 
his  soul  for  the  thought  or  spirit  which  is  innate  in 
everything  that  has  come  out  of  God's  creative  mind. 
If  the  ripened  mind  is  to  know  this  thought,  its  em- 
bodied image  must  make  an  impression  on  the  yet  un- 
conscious soul  of  the  child  and  leave  behind  it  forms 
which  can  serve  as  analogies  to  the  intellectual  order- 
ing of  things/  .  .  . 

We  must  render  perceptible  to  the  child  the  unity  of 
the  world,  absolute  existence,  the  world  within,  and  these 
in  an  earthly  childlike  fashion.  .  .  .  Such  things  we 
have  to  give  to  children  through  the  system  of  ordered 
games  and  occupations  which  I  have  created.*  .  .  . 

God  clothed  His  own  image  in  a  mass  of  clay  and 
was  not  ashamed  of  His  creation;  neither  will  I  be 
ashamed  to  set  forth  in  little  blocks  of  wood  my  ideas 
upon  the  nature  of  man.* 

The  kindergartner  who  has  achieved  intimacy 
with  Froebel's  thought  is  constantly  surprised  that 
his  critics  so  rarely  attack  him  in  what  is  either 
his  most  indefensible  or  his  most  impregnable 
point.  This  point  of  danger  is  defiantly  exposed 
in  the  sentences  quoted.  What  must  any  sane 
person  think  of  an  effort  to  render  perceptible  not 
only  the  unity  of  the  world,  but  absolute  exist- 
ence ?  And  is  not  any  educator  clearly  daft  who 
attempts  to  set  forth  in  little  blocks  of  wood  his 
ideas  upon  the  nature  of  man? 

•  Reminiscences  of  Froebel,  p)p.  210-11. 
'  Froebel's  Letters,  Michadis-Moore  ,  p.  57. 
» Ibid.,  p.  142. 


54  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Waiving  the  question  of  Froebel's  possible  in- 
sanity, let  us  give  our  attention  to  the  typical  ex- 
ercises through  which  he  tries  to  realize  the  aim 
so  boldly  declared.  These  exercises  are  of  three 
kinds.  In  the  first  kind  given  v,^holes  are  resolved 
into  their  component  parts  and  from  these  com- 
ponent parts  is  reconstructed  the  original  whole. 
The  second  kind  of  exercise  is  known  in  the  kin- 
dergarten as  a  sequence.  In  sequences  each  sep- 
arate figure  is  developed  from  its  immediate  pred- 
ecessor and  from  it  in  turn  is  evolved  its  imme- 
diate successor,  so  that  the  series,  when  complete, 
shows  a  linkage  of  related  forms.  In  the  third 
kind  of  exercise  there  is  not  only  a  serial  evolu- 
tion, but  an  evolution  which  arises  from  a  con- 
scious attempt  to  mediate  given  extremes.  These 
three  types  of  exercise  are  carried  out  in  every 
Froebelian  kindergarten,  and  their  merit  is  ap- 
proved by  sixty  years  of  experience.  Their  pri- 
mary object  is  to  overcome  gently  the  fragmen- 
tariness  and  discontinuity  of  childish  thought. 
The  child  who  takes  apart  and  puts  together  must 
give  his  attention  to  what  he  is  doing,  and  for  the 
few  minutes  in  which  he  is  thus  busily  engaged 
he  ceases  to  be  the  victim  of  chance  incitement. 
The  child  who  develops  one  form  from  another  is 
beginning  to  live  in  little  arcs  of  thought,  instead 
of  mere  detached  points  of  thought.  The  child 
who   connects    antitheses    through    a   mediatorial 


THE  FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  55 

series  is  beginning  to  work  for  and  with  a  con- 
scious purpose.  In  short,  through  organizing 
evolutionary  and  mediatorial  activities  self-active 
intelligence  begins  to  organize,  evolve,  and  me- 
diate itself. 

By  themselves  alone  the  values  indicated  justi- 
fy the  exercises  of  which  they  are  the  result. 
These  exercises  have,  however^  a  second  value, 
which,  while  logically  derivative  from,  is  psycho- 
logically equal  to  those  already  considered. 
"Through  actively  resolving  wholes  into  parts  and 
parts  into  wholes,  the  child  creates  in  himself  a 
selective  interest  which  causes  him  to  respond  with 
quickened  attention  to  the  relations  of  parts  and 
wholes  in  the  external  world.  In  like  manner  in- 
terest in  evolutionary  processes  is  aroused  by 
creating  sequences,  and  the  canceling  of  antithe- 
ses through  mediatorial  forms  leads  to  the  sin- 
gling out  of  analogous  processes  in  the  complex 
of  experience,  and  induces  a  bias  of  mind  favor- 
able to  the  interpretation  of  all  presented  antith- 
eses as  mere  termini  of,  or  poles  of,  relations. 
There  is  no  mystery  in  the  method  by  which  these 
results  are  reached.  He  who  connects  becomes 
connected  and  looks  for  connections.  He  who  de- 
velops becomes  developing  and  looks  for  develop- 
ments. He  who  transforms  apparently  excluding 
antitheses  into  the  relative  termini  of  an  including 
process  becomes  in  so  far  a  bridge  builder,  and 


56  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

thereby  a  discerner  of  the  truth  that  there  are 
no  bridgeless  chasms.  Evidently  we  have  simply 
arrived  once  more  at  the  generative  thought  so 
often  expressed  in  this  chapter.  What  we  do  we 
become.  What  we  become  we  continue  to  do, 
and  through  what  we  do  and  become  we  interpret 
the  powers  not  ourselves  with  which  we  come  in 
contactj^ 

(11.)  I  anticipate  a  question.  Granting  that 
acts  of  organizing  will  direct  attention  to  organic 
wholes;  that  evolutionary  exercises  will  awaken 
interest  in  evolutionary  processes;  and  that  the 
active  mediation  of  antitheses  will  create  a  ten- 
dency to  single  out  of  the  complex  of  experience 
hiediatorial  activities,  what  is  the  value  of  arous- 
ing these  special  forms  of  selective  interest?  The 
answer  to  this  question  admits  us  to  the  citadel 
of  Froebel's  thought.  The  C"^l  of  t^^Hflflt^""  is 
V^a  true  world-view  and  a  conforming  life.  The 
key  to  a  true  world-view  is  the  nature  of  mind. 
Mind  is  a  generic  and,  therefore,  self-creating 
energy.  It  is  what  it  does,  it  does  what  it  is, 
and  it  is  aware  of  that  active  doing  which  is  its 
being.  Thought,  feeling,  and  will  are  not  inde- 
pendent faculties  but  related  aspects  of  its  in- 
divisible energy.  A  completely  realized  mind 
must  have  completely  objectified  itself,  and  com- 
pletely realized  itself  in  this  self-objectifying  act. 
Every  thought  that  mind  can  think  must  have 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  57 

uttered  itself  in  a  ci-eative  deed ;  the  relations  and 
processes  of  thought,  no  less  than  its  detached 
distinctions  must  have  been  objectified;  finally, 
the  aboriginal  self-determining  energy  must  have 
duplicated  itself  as  well  as  objectified  its  distinc- 
tions, relations,  and  processes.  This  completely 
self-objectified  and  self-duplicated  mind  is  God. 
The  cosmos  is  the  boundless  volume  of  His  objecti- 
fied ideas.  The  relations  and  processes  of  nature 
correspond  to  the  relations  and  processes  of  eter- 
nal intellect.  The  evolutionary  ascent  of  nature 
is  the  revealed  path  of  an  eternally  realized  ascent 
of  mind.  Man  is  the  crown  of  nature,  because 
in  him  is  incarnate  not  God's  thought,  but 
His  thinking,  not  God's  deeds,  but  His  doing  or 
willing,  not  divine  self-determinations,  but  divine 
self-determining.  In  virtue  of  this  self-determin- 
*^ng  energy  man  is  a  free  being;  in  virtue  of  the 
fact  that  self-determining  energy  is  generic  en- 
ergy, he  is  intrinsically  a  social  being,  and  must 
make  himself  actually  what  he  is  ideally  through 
the  corporate  progress  of  history,  and  through 
those  ascending  forms  of  social  organization 
which  we  know  as  the  hierarchy  of  human  insti- 
tutions. In  brief,  nature  is  the  becoming  of 
mind;  man  is  self-realizing  mind;  God  is  eter- 
nally self-realized  mind.  Hence,  to  know  the 
structure  of  mind  would  be  to  know  God,  nature, 
and  man,  and  to  live  in  conscious  and  free  con- 


58  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

formity  with  the  structure  of  mind  would  be  to 
fulfill  with  joy  the  most  compelling  demands  of 
the  categorical  imperative. 

The  path  of  history  is  a  devious  and  toilsome 
one,  because  on  their  march  toward  a  hidden 
summit  men  are  forever  losing  their  way.  The 
path  of  education,  as  broken  by  Froebel,  is  one 
of  rapid  and  joyous  ascent,  because  it  issues  from 
the  deepest  impulses  of  the  human  spirit  and  aims 
consciously  at  their  realization.  In  his  own  mind 
the  little  child  carries  the  key  to  nature,  man,  and 
God.  Because  mind  is  analytic,  synthetic,  evolu- 
tionary, self-antithetic,  and  self-duplicating  it 
rejoices  to  do  the  smallest  deeds  which  are  cast 
into  these  forms.  Through  doing  such  deeds  se- 
lective interest  is  awakened  in  the  correspondent 
deeds  of  nature,  and  imagination  illumined  with 
a  foregleam  of  their  meaning.  Through  the  half- 
blind  tendencies  it  discerns  within  itself,  emer- 
gent intellect,  interprets  the  wholly  blind  tenden- 
cies of  nature  and  glances  toward  an  absolute 
mind  in  whom  all  these  blind  tendencies  exist  as 
completely  realized  ideals.  The  logic  of  Christ 
which,  from  the  imperfect  love  of  man,  argued 
the  perfect  love  of  God,  and  beheld  adumbrations 
of  this  love  in  the  phenomena  of  nature  is  ampli- 
fied in  a  method  of  education  which  from  every 
typical  activity  of  the  human  spirit  argues  an 
analogous  but  transcendent  activity  in  the  Divine 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  59 

First  Principle,  and  beholds  in  nature  its  obscure 
oracle  and  adumbration. 

(12.)  The  prime  article  of  Froebel's  educa- 
tional creed  is  that  the  seeds  of  every  thought  it 
will  ever  be  worth  while  to  think,  every  deed  it 
will  ever  be  worth  while  to  do,  and  every  sentiment 
it  will  ever  be  worth  while  to  feel  are  indigenous 
to  the  soil  of  the  mind,  and  that  the  chief  duty 
of  early  education  is  to  abet  their  native  tendency 
toward  development,  by  inciting  typical  acts 
which  will  issue  in  typical  mental  attitudes. 
This  is  his  theory  of  vortical  as  opposed  to  con- 
centric education,  and  the  final  reason  for  his 
emphasis  upon  typical  acts  as  contrasted  with 
thought-masses.  His  educational  aim  is  stated 
by  himself  with  admirable  clarity  in  the  follow- 
ing letter  to  an  intimate  friend : 

Often  and  often,  so  you  say,  passages  which  I 
read  in  the  Sunday  Journal*  evoke  from  the  depths 
of  my  inner  consciousness  like  thoughts  which  I  have 
originated  for  myself,  and  like  experiences  which  I 
have  gone  through  in  my  own  life  until  I  grow  quite 
astonished  and  puzzled.  What  you  thus  confide  to  me 
relates  to  one  part  of  the  sweetest,  best,  and  purest 
fruit  of  my  life,  one  part,  namely,  of  what  I  mean  to 
do  or  have  already  accomplished  (through  my  chil- 
dren's games  and  occupations)  toward  clearing  a 
pathway  through  the  tangles  of  human  life.  I  am  en- 
deavoring to  bring  man  through  the  knowledge  of  his 

» Froebel's  Educational  Organ. 


60  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

own  inner  feelings  and  the  experiences  of  his  own 
life  to  a  forefeeling,  a  perception,  and,  finally,  to  a 
clear  consciousness  of  this  great  fact,  that  for  all  the 
deepest  conceptions  which  govern  life  there  exist  uni- 
versally active  life  experiences  which  are  found  to  be 
repeated  in  the  case  of  every  man  who  examines  the 
development  of  his  own  career  with  careful  scrutiny 
and  endeavors  to  bring  himself  to  a  consciousness  of 
its  meaning/ 

Some  years  ago  in  an  attempted  contrast  be- 
tween traditional  methods  and  the  method  of 
/^roebel  I  made  the  following  statement :  "  Our 
too  common  defect  is  that  we  try  to  pour  into 
the  child  knowledge  he  is  not  prepared  to  receive, 
and  in  which  he  feels  no  interest.  Hence  our 
teaching  floats  in  the  air  unattached  by  cords  of 
experience  to  the  life  of  the  child.  Now  Froebel 
is  the  evolutionist  among  educators.  He  will 
plant  no  full-grown  oak  of  thought.  He  will  not 
even  plant  a  sapling.  He  insists  upon  the  acorn, 
and  even  this  shall  be  planted  only  in  a  soil  pre- 
pared for  its  reception  by  fertilizing  experiences." 
I  repeat  this  statement  in  order  to  comment  upon 
its  insufficiency,  for  as  I  have  been  trying  to 
make  clear,  the  final  truth  is  that  Froebel  will 
not  plant  at  all,  but  that  his  aim  is  to  nourish 
self-germinating   seeds   of   thought,    feeling,    and 

«  Froebel's  Letters  as  above  cited,  pp.  96-97, 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  61 

will  through  abetting  the  child's  native  impulse 
toward  varied  forms  of  creative  activity. 

Let  us  learn  a  new  lesson  from  the  lily  of  the 
field.  Hidden  deep  in  the  earth  is  the  bulb  where 
life  sleeps.  Warmed  by  the  sunshine,  fed  by 
spring  showers  this  life  stirs,  swells,  mounts,  and 
blossoms  into  a  beauty  greater  than  that  of  the 
king  in  his  glory.  Life  was  in  the  bulb.  What 
it  needed  was  heat,  moisture,  and  light.  When 
the  inner  impulse  to  grow  was  awakened  this  life 
reached  out  eagerly  for  all  the  food  it  could  ap- 
propriate from  earth  and  air,  to  build  into  a  body 
the  ideal  stirring  within  it.  So  is  it  with  the 
mind.  Latent  in  it  are  creative  energies.  It 
wants  to  create  itself.  It  wants  to  recreate  the 
world.  Quicken  these  energies  and  mind  itself 
will  reach  out  for  knowledge  as  the  material 
through  which  alone  it  can  realize  its  own  deepest 
impulses. 

Broadly  speaking,  the  Froebelian  gifts  and  oc- 
cupations relate  to  the  theoretic  and  practical  mas- 
tery of  nature,  and  play  with  them  admits  chil- 
dren to  the  outer  courts  of  the  two  great  temples 
of  science  and  art  Passing  from  the  gifts  and 
occupations  to  the  dramatic  songs  and  games,  we 
enter  a  new  realm,  and  play  takes  on  a  character 
which  prepares  for  the  humanities,  as  contradis- 
tinguished from  the  sciences  and  arts,  by  begin- 
ning the  revelation  of  social  or  ideal   selfhood. 


62  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

From  time  immemorial  attempts  have  been  made 
to  capture  the  imagination  of  childhood  through 
stories  wherein  the  great  ideals  of  human  life 
were  presented  in  the  form  of  concrete  examples. 
For  many  ages  the  same  ideals  have  been  illus- 
trated in  pictures.  It  remained  for  Froebel  to 
induce  the  child  to  present  these  ideals  to  him- 
self, and  he  accomplished  this  signal  achievement 
through  that  unerring  intuition  of  genius  which 
enabled  him  to  divine  the  relation  between  the 
strongest  impulses  of  childhood  and  the  supreme 
values  of  human  life. 

In  their  native  play  children  are  forever  seek- 
ing to  interpret  human  deeds,  characters,  and 
relationships  by  reproducing  them.  Since,  how- 
ever, much  of  the  environing  life  which  they  re- 
produce is  not  truly  human,  and  since  they  have 
no  touchstone  by  which  to  test  the  alloy  of  experi- 
ence, imitative  play  misses  its  aim  and  darkens 
instead  of  illuminating  imagination.  In  the  kin- 
dergarten games,  on  the  contrary,  children  hold 
up  before  themselves  the  image  of  an  ideal  world 
and  an  ideal  self,  and  thus  make  themselves  aware 
of  the  difference  between  what  is  and  what  ought 
to  be.  Through  this  discovery  of  the  ideal,  con- 
science is  generated,  and  a  short  cut  is  made  to 
that  higher  plane  of  consciousness  upon  which 
the  mind  becomes  capable  of  self-direction,  self- 
development,  and  self-conquest. 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  63 

(13.)  In  order  to  avoid  possible  misconception, 
it  is  necessary  to  define  what  is  meant  by  an  ideal 
self  and  an  ideal  world.  The  ideal  is  the  histor- 
ically unrealized,  but  it  is  never  the  unreaL 
Rather  is  it  the  one  great  reality  through  whose 
power  the  unreal  is  forever  overcome.  Since  the 
dawn  of  history  the  march  of  man  has  been  in 
a  definite  direction.  The  path  along  which  hu- 
manity moves  goes  somewhere.  Doubtless  it  is 
one  of  those  winding  paths  through  which  alone, 
as  Goethe  reminds  us,  steep  summits  can  be  ap- 
proached, but  it  has  a  summit  which  through  all 
its  twists  and  turns  it  is  forever  nearing.  Sur- 
veying this  path  from  its  beginning  to  its  present 
end  we  become  aware  of  its  direction  and  its  goal. 
That  goal  is  what  is  really  meant  by  the  ideal. 
Xever  completely  realized  in  any  single  human 
life,  nor  in  any  mundane  sphere,  it  is,  neverthe- 
less, the  incentive  of  all  individual  and  collective 
endeavor.  Its  approximate  realization  in  indi- 
viduals creates  heroes  and  saints.  Its  self-ap- 
proximating energy  working  through  corporate 
humanity  creates  higher  civilizations.  Mr.  Fiske 
has  said  "  that  a  community  of  intelligent  beings 
living  in  free  obedience  to  a  perfect  moral  law 
is  the  goal  toward  which  ever  since  our  solar  sys- 
tem was  a  patch  of  nebulous  vapor  the  cosmic 
process   has   aimed."      Completing  his   statement 

with  the  afiirmation  that  this  blessed  community 

7 


64  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

is  not  only  the  goal  of  evolution  but  its  archetype, 
we  may  define  the  ideal  as  the  throb  of  eternal 
reality  in  the  heart  of  all  that  is  vanishing  and 
unreal. 

With  the  conception  of  a  community  of  perfect 
beings  as  both  archetype  and  goal  of  the  cosmic 
process,  we  begin  to  understand  that  human  in- 
stitutions are  the  agencies  through  which  man- 
kind is  created  out  of  men.  Between  mere  natural 
man  and  the  object  of  his  brutal  lust  the  ideal 
of  the  family  intervenes  with  the  amenities  of 
courtship  and  betrothal,  the  solemnity  of  marriage 
vows,  and  the  cumulative  moral  sense  of  freely 
assumed  responsibility.  Between  man  and  the 
animal  greed  which  snatches  at  food  and  beats 
and  slays  all  rival  snatchers,  civil  society  inter- 
venes with  the  complementary  ideals  of  specific 
vocation  and  reciprocal  service.  Between  the 
spirit  of  man  and  bestial  revenge  the  state  inter- 
venes with  the  majesty  of  law  and  the  panoply  of 
justice.  Between  man  and  the  pitiful  cowardice 
born  of  immemorial  struggle  with  wild  beasts 
and  wilder  elements  the  church  intervenes  with 
authoritative  declaration  that  since  God  is  on  the 
side  of  His  creatures,  the  least  and  lowest  has  no 
cause  to  tremble.  Thus  redeeming  man  from 
lust,  greed,  revenge,  and  fear,  human  institutions 
transform  the  victim  of  instinct  into  the  freeman 
of  the  Spirit. 


THE  FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  65 

In  so  far  as  civilization  prevails  over  savagism, 
spiritual  humanity  receives  into  its  encircling 
arms  the  immature,  the  feeble,  nay,  even  the  bru- 
tal individual,  and  begins  the  work  of  his  deliv- 
erance. Come  unto  me,  whispers  the  family,  and 
learn  to  trust  and  to  love.  Come  unto  me,  calls 
civil  society,  and  learn  to  serve  and  be  served. 
Come  unto  me,  commands  the  state,  and  learn 
the  beauty  of  law  and  the  glory  of  organized  lib- 
erty. Come  unto  me,  sings  the  church,  and  learn 
how  to  hasten  the  glad  time,  the  brave  time,  the 
free  time  when  neither  shall  any  man  fear  him- 
self nor  cause  another  to  fear.  And  now  in  these 
latter  days  the  school,  youngest  of  great  institu- 
tions, adds  its  urgent  and  touching  appeal.  Come 
Unto  me,  all  ye  who  are  ignorant,  and  be  enlight- 
ened. Come  unto  me,  all  who  are  feeble,  and  wax 
in  strength.  Come,  learn  of  the  labors  wrought 
and  the  agony  endured  for  your  sake  by  that  great 
toiler  and  sufferer,  humanity,  as  he  bore  the  yoke 
and  wrestled  with  the  riddle  of  the  centuries. 
Not  for  the  few  he  fought  and  bled  and  conquered. 
For  all  was  his  strength  spent  and  his  blood 
poured.  Come  learn  to  see  with  his  far-piercing 
eyes ;  learn  to  labor  with  his  disciplined  strength. 
Then  shall  you,  too,  join  the  victorious  march  of 
man  toward  the  promised  land  of  freedom  and 
of  love — then  shall  you  become  even  now  a  mem- 
ber of  that  blessed  community  which  religion  por- 


66  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

trays  mystically  in  her  New  Jerusalem;  which 
St.  Augustine  lifts  before  the  eyes  of  a  despair- 
ing and  vanishing  world  in  his  City  of  God; 
which  Dante  celebrates  as  the  consummate  blos- 
som of  creation  in  his  great  white  rose  of  Para- 
dise; of  whose  animating  spirit,  Goethe  sings  in 
his  mystic  chorus,  and  which  enlightened  science 
increasingly  recognizes  as  the  goal  toward  which 
from  the  beginning  the  cosmic  process  has  aimed. 

Those  who  have  "  among  least  things  an  under 
sense  of  greatest,"  will  not  sneer  at  Froebel  because 
he  dares  to  break  a  path  which,  issuing  from  the 
plays  of  childhood,  mounts  toward  the  Holy  City. 
It  is  no  disgrace  to  gravitation  that  while  swing- 
ing the  planets  it  rules  the  apple's  fall,  and  Eter- 
nal Love  is  not  less  sublime  because  while  throned 
in  the  majesty  of  universal  dominion  it  stoops 
in  the  lowly  form  of  matter  to  be  the  servant  of 
all.  If  these  things  be  true,  must  we  not  approve 
Froebel's  effort  to  get  little  children  to  play  the 
ideals  of  life,  in  order  that  they  may  the  more 
inwardly  appreciate  them  and  applaud  him  for 
straightening  and  thereby  shortening  the  path  of 
history  ? 

(14.)  The  merit  of  the  kindergarten  games  will 
be  more  clearly  discerned  if  we  pause  to  define 
accurately  the  meaning  of  typical  characters.  A 
typical  character  is  the  concrete  embodiment  of 
some  generic  or  creative  aspect  of  human  nature  or 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  67 

of  some  native  passion  which  collides  with  generic 
selfhood.  Typical  characters  may  be  of  all  degrees 
of  complexity.  The  three  men  of  Gotham  who 
went  to  sea  in  a  bowl  are  typical  characters  of  an 
elementary  kind,  because  they  illustrate  that  all 
too  common  rashness  which  must  bring  disaster. 
Hamlet  is  a  complex  typical  character  exemplify- 
ing the  collapse  of  purpose  under  a  strain  dispro- 
portionate to  native  strength.  The  characters  rep- 
resented in  kindergarten  games  must  have  three 
marks.  They  must  be  typical,  elementary,  and 
ideal.  Children  should  not  waste  time  dramatiz- 
ing the  merely  capricious.  They  should  not  rep- 
resent elementary  types  of  evil.  They  should 
not  represent  complex  types  of  either  good  or 
evil. 

The  duties  of  life  arise  out  of  its  relationships, 
and  the  doing  of  duty  creates  ideal  types  of  char- 
acter. The  good  man  is  an  affectionate  son,  a 
kind  brother,  a  faithful  husband,  a  protecting  and 
tender  father,  a  stanch  friend,  and  a  genial  com- 
rade. He  is  also  an  industrious  member  of  the 
economic  organization  and  a  grateful  recipient  of 
its  lavish  bounty.  He  is  a  patriot  ready  to  re- 
spond to  the  call  of  his  country.  He  feels  the 
appeal  of  a  common  humanity  and  is  prompt 
to  help  the  needy  and  succor  the  weak.  He 
lives  in  sympathetic  touch  with  the  invisible 
source   of  life,   and   through  the  two  great   acts 


68  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

of  religion,  worship,  and  sacrifice,  perpetually 
renews  the  tie  which  binds  him  to  the  heavenly 
powers. 

In  view  of  this  close  connection  between  rela- 
tionships, duties,  and  character,  it  is  evident  that 
if  we  desire  to  reveal  the  ideal  to  children,  or 
better,  if  we  wish  to  help  them  discover  it  for 
themselves,  we  should  incite  them  to  play  that 
they  are  kind  fathers,  tender  mothers,  obedient 
sons  and  daughters,  affectionate  brothers  and  sis- 
ters, busy  members  of  the  working  world,  sol- 
diers marching  in  defense  of  flag  and  fatherland, 
and  worshipers  old  and  young  answering  the  call 
of  the  solemn  bell  and  wending  their  way  to  the 
mysterious  building  whose  spire,  like  a  great  fin- 
ger, points  to  the  sky.  So  obvious,  indeed,  is  this 
method  of  revealing  the  ideal  that  it  was  instinc- 
tively adopted  by  unlearned  peasant  mothers  in 
ages  beyond  the  reach  of  our  chronology.  The 
kindergarten  simply  does  with  more  conscious  in- 
tent and  clearer  vision  what  maternal  love  has 
always  tried  to  do. 

(15.)  In  dramatizing  elementary  types  of  char- 
acter children  necessarily  portray  primal  rela- 
tions, but  in  addition  to  such  incidental  sugges- 
tion of  social  wholes  the  kindergarten  offers  a 
number  of  games  into  which  the  portrayal  of  char- 
acter does  not  enter,  and  whose  exclusive  accent 
is  placed  upon  the  tie  of  fellowship.    To  this  class 


THE  FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  69 

of  plays  belong  all  the  games  calling  for  reciproc- 
ity between  the  child  in  the  center  of  the  circle 
and  those  forming  the  ring;  the  breaking  up  of 
larger  into  smaller  rings;  the  wreath  and  star 
games;  the  wandering  and  marching  games;  the 
family  games;  the  games  which  throw  into  relief 
the  dependence  of  the  family  upon  organized  in- 
dustry and  those  which  suggest  the  bond  between 
different  branches  of  industry. 

It  is  impossible  to  make  brief  reference  to  these 
social  plays  without  running  the  risk  of  exposing 
the  kindergarten  to  ridicule,  and  the  danger  is 
the  greater  because  the  majority  of  those  who  will 
read  this  book  have  "  apperceptive  masses  "  with 
which  its  suggestions  cannot  "  fuse  "  without  un- 
dergoing a  radical  change.  For  thirty  years  ex- 
ponents of  the  kindergarten  have  denied  that  they 
were  making  an  absurd  effort  to  define  institu- 
tional ideals  to  children  between  the  ages  of  four 
and  six.  For  thirty  years  they  have  insisted  that 
what  they  were  really  trying  to  do  was  to  lead  chil- 
dren "  to  love  what  they  ought  to  love  and  hate 
what  they  ought  to  hate."  Nevertheless,  the  cir- 
cle games  have  been  repeatedly  derided  as  assumed 
attempts  to  make  children  prematurely  aware  of 
institutional  ideals,  precisely  as  plays  with  balls, 
blocks,  tablets,  sticks,  and  rings  have  been  at- 
tacked on  the  ground  that  object  lessons  in  geom- 
etry were  not  suitable  to  children  of  such  tender 


70  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

years.  Within  the  past  few  years,  however,  the 
despair  of  protesting  Froebelians  has  been  miti- 
gated by  two  great  discoveries.  Modern  child 
study  has  discovered  the  superior  merit  of  Catho- 
lic over  Protestant  methods  of  developing  the  re- 
ligious sense,  and  modern  psychology  has  discov- 
ered the  priority  of  action  over  conscious  thought 
and  tirelessly  repeats  that  what  we  do  we  attend 
to ;  what  we  attend  to  becomes  prepotent  in  deter- 
mining our  associations;  and  our  associated  ideas 
constitute  the  apperceiving  mass  through  which 
we  interpret  experience.  These  discoveries  are 
themselves  great  apperceiving  ideas  to  which 
Froebelians  may  hopefully  appeal.  For  what  the 
V  kindergarten  does  is  simply  to  quicken  domestic, 
economic  and  patriotic  impulses  through  the  same 
appeal  to  imagination  by  which  the  Catholic 
Church  quickens  religious  impulse,  and  it  makes 
the  appeal  to  imagination  more  potent  by  enlist- 
ing the  child's  own  activity  in  the  revelation  of 
the  ideal. 
(  (16.)  In  addition  to  the  impersonation  of  typi- 
Vcal  characters,  and  the  portrayal  of  typical  rela- 
tions, Froebel  suggests  the  representation  of  typi- 
cal processes,  such  as  the  series  of  activities 
through  which  we  get  milk  and  bread ;  the  process 
of  house-building,  and  the  making  of  a  wheel. 
Games  of  this  kind  are  so  planned  that  they  not 
only  hint  the  dependence  of  the  individual,  but 


THE   FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  71 

the  interdependence  of  different  industries.  The 
baker  depends  upon  the  miller  and  farmer ;  the 
carpenter  upon  the  woodman ;  and  without  the 
wheel  the  whole  industrial  world  would  fall  to 
pieces.  From  the  moral  point  of  view  it  is  not  a 
matter  of  small  moment  whether  children  take 
food,  shelter,  clothing,  and  transportation  as  nat- 
ural and  inalienable  rights,  or  whether  they  real- 
ize in  some  measure  the  conspiring  activities 
which  make  possible  these  gifts  of  life.  From  the 
intellectual  point  of  view  it  makes  a  wide  differ- 
ence whether  children  form  the  habit  of  seeing 
mere  points  of  fact  or  whether  they  are  led  to 
discover  increasing  arcs  of  fact.  Whoever  lives 
in  broken  pieces  of  himself  must  see  a  piecemeal 
world.  He  who  attains  continuity  of  thought  and 
purpose  will  look  away  from  those  fragments  of 
activity  we  call  things  to  the  energies  that  in- 
clude them.  Hence,  taken  in  connection  with  the 
sequences  created  in  gift  exercises,  the  games  rep- 
resenting processes  give  the  mind  a  bias  which, 
with  increasing  years  and  enlarging  experience, 
will  predispose  tow^ard  an  evolutionary  view  of 
nature,  of  individual  life  and  human  history.* 

'  While  the  accent  of  the  Froebelian  games  is  placed  upon 
human  character  and  relationships,  physical  nature  is  not 
ignored  and  in  a  number  of  plays  are  represented  typical 
phenomena  of  the  inorganic  world,  typical  aspects  of  plant 
and  animal  life  and  typical  attitudes  of  man  toward  these 


72  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

"  The  universal,"  says  Emerson,  "  never  inter- 
ests us  until  it  is  housed  in  an  individual."  Con- 
versely, v^^hat  interests  us  in  the  individual  is  the 
universal.  Since  we  are  so  made  that  we  will  not 
refrain  from  seeking  the  universal,  it  is  evident 
that  a  child's  mind  may  he  permanently  warped 
by  the  coercion  of  fictitious  or  contingent  apper- 
ceiving  ideas.  Education,  therefore,  must  fur- 
nish imagination  with  valid  types;  geometric 
types  as  the  first  means  of  reducing  to  relative 
unity,  "  the  chaos  of  sense-experience  " ;  typical 
plants  and  animals  to  illustrate  the  great  classes 
into  which  the  vegetable  and  animal  worlds  are 
divided ;  the  immortal  types  of  the  human  form 
bequeathed  to  us  by  the  genius  of  Greece,  to  teach 
us  how  divine  it  may  become ;  typical  human  char- 
acters as  portrayed  in  history  and  made  trans- 
parent in  literature,  in  order  that  we  may  un- 
derstand the  brotherhood  of  man,  and  that  each 
one  of  us  may  not  be  shut  up  with  a  heart 
which  knoweth  only  its  own  bitterness,  or  bounded 
by  a  joy  with  which  no  stranger  can  intermeddle. 
Can  we  speak  of  friendship  without  thinking  of 

three  spheres  of  being.  See  Froebel's  Commentaries  on  the 
Weathervane  and  Light  Songs,  The  Flower  Song,  The  Garden 
Gate,  The  Little  Gardener,  Beckoning  the  Chickens  and 
Pigeons,  The  Fish  in  the  Brook,  The  Shadow  Songs,  The 
Farm  Yard  Gate.  See  also  in  Letters  to  a  Mother,  the  follow- 
ing chapters:  From  Wind  to  Spirit,  The  Soul  of  the  Flower, 
The  Discovery  of  Life. 


THE  FROEBELIAN  ANTITHESIS  73 

David  and  Jonathan,  Achilles  and  Patroclus,  Py- 
lades  and  Orestes  ?  Can  we  think  of  patriotism 
without  recalling  Curtius  and  Regulus,  William 
the  Silent  or  our  own  Washington  ?  Can  we  dream 
of  ideal  motherhood  without  an  immediate  vision 
of  some  great  picture  of  the  Madonna  and  Child  ? 
Finally,  what  is  the  beating  heart  of  our  Christian 
religion  if  not  the  recognition  of  one  typical  life 
as  the  standard  by  which  we  measure  both  the 
human  and  the  divine?  When  adult  humanity 
gets  rid  of  types  it  will  be  time  enough  to  ask 
how  we  may  do  without  their  indispensable  as- 
sistance in  the  education  of  the  young  child. 
Until  that  impossible  moment  let  us  use  with- 
out misgiving  types  of  form,  types  of  char- 
acter and  situation,  types  of  relation  and  process, 
being  sure  in  our  own  minds  that  a  type  is  the 
concrete  embodiment  of  a  universal  standard, 
the  picture  form  in  which  all  great  ideals  must 
be  first  revealed  to  the  eye,  the  heart,  and  the 
imagination. 

(17.)  The  concentric  programme  and  its  Froe- 
belian  antithesis  embody  mutually  exclusive  ideals 
of  education.  In  the  former,  the  core  of  unity  is  a 
subject  selected  by  the  teacher;  in  the  latter,  the 
core  of  unity  is  the  child  at  play.  The  concentric 
programme  clusters  about  its  selected  subject  a 
number  of  more  or  less  arbitrarily  related  ideas; 
its  Froebelian  antithesis  follows  and  guides  self- 


74  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

evolving  energies  as  they  ascend  in  widening 
spirals  toward  ever  greater  spherical  totalities  of 
thought,  feeling,  and  will.  The  method  of  the 
concentric  programme  is  a  method  of  the  under- 
standing. It  aims  to  create  a  circle  of  conscious 
thought  and  appeals  through  the  discriminating 
intellect  to  feeling  and  volition.  The  method  of 
the  kindergarten  is  the  method  of  literature  and 
^rt,  and  its  primary  appeal  is  to  imagination. 
Remembering  that  "  truth  embodied  in  a  tale  shall 
enter  in  at  lowly  doors,"  it  pictures  universal 
truths  through  concrete  examples.  Anticipating 
that  great  dictum  of  contemporary  psychology,  the 
priority  of  the  deed,  it  presents  these  concrete  ex- 
amples in  the  form  of  productive  processes  and 
dramatic  representations.  It  abets  the  native  ef- 
^''''^fort  of  childhood  to  create  a  miniature  world 
which  shall  interpret  the  actual  s^rld.  In  this 
miniature  world  human  characters  and  relation- 
ships assume  elementary  but  ideal  forms;  the 
archetypes  of  nature  interpret  her  products,  sug- 
gest her  causal  processes,  and  declare  her  aesthetic 
ideals;  evolutionary  doing  reacts  to  produce  evo- 
lutionary seeing,  and  the  constant  resolution  of 
antitheses  quickens  a  hopeful  presentiment  of  the 
truth  that  there  are  no  obstacles  which  mind  may 
not  vanquish,  no  contradictions  the  free  spirit 
may  not  annul.  By  playing  all  the  ideals  which 
interpret  nature  and  human  life  the  kindergarten 


THE  FROEBELIAN   ANTITHESIS  75 

flings  its  rainbow  bridge  between  the  heart  of 
childhood  and  the  vision  of  manhood,  and  through, 
the  allurement  of  the  beautiful  impels  intellect 
to  the  wrestle  for  truth,  and  persuades  will  to  a 
prevailing  struggle  for  goodness. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE    METHODICAL,    TREATMENT    OF    LITERATURE 

The  most  meritorious  deed  of  the  educators 
who  originated  the  concentric  programme  is 
their  insistence  upon  the  value  of  classic  stories. 
It  is  unfortunate  that  they  should  have  undone 
this  righteous  deed  by  using  such  stories  as  cores 
of  concentration  for  all  sorts  of  exercises,  and 
by  subjecting  them  to  what  is  called  a  methodical 
treatment.  The  disastrous  results  of  the  first  mis- 
take have  been  already  considered.  In  illustra- 
tion of  the  second  I  quote  the  story  of  The  Won- 
derful Kettle  "  treated  "  for  the  benefit  of  chil- 
dren in  the  first  school  year. 

THE   WONDERFUL  KETTLE* 

I 

Once  there  was  a  very  poor  little  girl,  who  lived 
with  her  mother  near  a  great  wood.     They  had  noth- 

•  I  quote  from  Herbart  and  the  Herbartians,  pp.  145-47. 
The  story  as  there  told  is  translated  from  Das  Erste  und 
Zweite  Schuljahr  and  we  are  assured  by  Dr.  De  Garmo  that 
it  gives  a  good  idea  of  the  general  method  of  treatment. 

76 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT  OF   LITERATURE    77 

ing  to  eat,  and  grew  very  hungry.  Then  the  little 
girl  went  out  into  the  woods.  Here  an  old  woman, 
who  knew  already  that  the  little  girl  was  hungry,  met 
her.  So  the  old  woman  gave  the  little  girl  a  kettle, 
and  said  to  her,  "  If  you  say  to  the  kettle,  *  Kettle, 
cook,'  it  will  cook  you  good,  sweet  rice.  But  if  you 
say,  'Kettle,  stop,'  it  will  stop  cooking."  Then  the 
little  girl  took  the  kettle  home  to  her  mother,  and 
told  her  all  about  it.  After  this  they  did  not  need  to 
go  hungry,  for  as  often  as  they  pleased  they  ate  good, 
sweet  rice. 


One  day  the  mother  went  away  from  home,  and  left 
the  little  girl  all  alone.  Soon  she  became  hungry,  and 
said  to  the  kettle,  "  Kettle,  cook " ;  but  she  had  for- 
gotten all  about  saying,  "  Kettle,  stop."  The  kettle 
kept  on  cooking  more  rice,  until  it  ran  over.  Then 
the  kitchen  became  full  of  boiled  rice,  then  the  whole 
house,  then  the  street,  and  at  last  all  the  houses.  No- 
body knew  what  to  do. 

At  last  the  mother  came  home,  and  called  out, 
"  Kettle,  stop."  It  stopped  cooking  at  once ;  but  who- 
ever wanted  to  get  into  that  town  had  to  eat  his  way 
in  through  the  rice. 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT 

A.  (1)  I  have  told  you  about  a  little  girl.  Who  had 
died?  Could  they  give  her  food  any  longer?  The 
poor  girl  must  have  often  suffered  hunger,  why? 
What  must  she  have  had,  not  to  be  hungry  any 
more?  Children  name  many  kinds  of  food.  There 
are  warm  foods  and  cold  ones.    How  are  warm  fooda 


78  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

prepared?  (Kitchen,  stove,  fire.)  How  long  must  rice 
cook?    May  it  cook  forever?    What  would  happen? 

I  will  tell  you  of  a  little  girl  who  often  had  to  go 
hungry. 

(2)  Story  to  "as  often  as  they  pleased,  they  ate 
good,  sweet  rice." 

B.  (1)  What  did  the  old  woman  give  the  girl? 
What  was  she  to  say  to  it?  Could  the  mother  say 
this,  also?  How  did  she  know  about  it?  What  would 
the  kettle  do  ?  How  long  would  it  cook  ?  Do  you  sup- 
pose the  girl  had  thought  of  this?  If  she  had  not, 
what  would  happen? 

(2)  Story  to  "  and  nobody  knew  what  to  do." 

C.  (1)  How  long  will  the  kettle  go  on  cooking? 
Who  could  stop  it?    Where  is  the  mother? 

(2)  Story  to  the  close.  Repetition  by  children. 
Uniting  of  the  three  sections.  Questions  on  the 
whole.     Several  pupils  tell  the  whole  story. 

(3)  The  child  had  not  remembered  what  the  old 
woman  had  said.  Who  had?  Has  anyone  ever  told 
you  anything  that  you  ought  to  notice  and  remember? 
(The  teacher,  parents,  brothers,  and  sisters,  etc.  Chil- 
dren give  examples.)  Who  had  not  forgotten  what  the 
old  woman  said  ?  What  could  the  mother  do  when  the 
rice  ran  over?  Who  had  forgotten  it?  Who  did  not 
know  what  to  do?  If  you  have  forgotten  something, 
what  can  you  not  do?  But  if  you  have  remem- 
bered, what  can  you  do?  What  does  the  teacher 
(papa,  mamma)  say  when  you  have  forgotten 
something?  What  should  you  not  do?  What  should 
you  do? 

(4)  "  We  must  not  forget  what  we  are  told  to  do." 

(5)  Application :  e.  g.  What  should  you  do  when 
you  meet  the  teacher?    (Greet  him.)     When  you  meet 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT  OF   LITERATURE    79 

people  on  the  street?     When  your  mother  goes  away 
and  tells  you  something,  what  must  you  do?  etc/ 

The  treatment  of  a  story  illustrated  in  the 
above  example  is  an  attempt  to  carry  out  in 
the  teaching  of  literature  what  Herbartians  call 
the  five  formal  steps  of  instruction.  The  follow- 
ing tabular  presentation  of  these  several  steps  is 
given  by  Dr.  De  Garmo. 


ion — Analysis       )  .  x-         * 

CI     XL    •      f  Apperception  of  percepts, 
tion — Synthesis    \    '^^        '^  *^        »^ 


1.  Preparation — Analysis 

2.  Presentation- 

3.  Association  )  Thought.     The  derivation  of  and  ar- 

4.  Systematization    )      rangement  of  rule,  principle,  class. 

5.  Application —  From  knowing  to  doing — use  of  motor 

powers.* 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  five  steps  of  instruc- 
tion fall  into  three  divisions,  the  first  and  second 
divisions  containing  each  two  steps,  and  the  final 
division  but  a  single  step.  The  first  step  prepares 
for  a  new  subject  by  calling  into  consciousness 
the  apperceiving  ideas  through  which  it  may  be 
related  to  the  existent  store  of  experience,  while 
the  second  step  attempts  a  vivid  presentation  of 
the  subject  thus  prepared  for.  Through  the  third 
and  fourth  steps  the  general  principle  concretely 
illustrated  in  the  particular  example  is  elicited, 
while  in  the  final  step  a  practical  application  of 

>  Herbart's  Outlines  of  Eklucational  Doctrine,  Lange  and 
De  Garnlo,  p.  59. 
8 

bfATENOKMAl-SCUOUL, 


80  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

this  principle  is  made  to  the  life  of  the  pupil. 
In  the  methodical  treatment  of  the  story  of  The 
Wonderful  Kettle  all  these  steps  are  conscien- 
tiously traversed.  In  sections  A  (1),  B  (1), 
and  C  (1)  we  are  shown  how  the  mind  is  prepared 
for  each  new  lesson.  In  sections  A  (2),  B  (2), 
and  C  (2)  we  are  called  on  to  traverse  the  second 
step  of  vivid  presentation.  In  section  3,  begin- 
ning with  the  sentence,  "  The  child  had  not  re- 
membered what  the  old  woman  had  said,"  we  ad- 
vance to  the  third  step  whose  aim  is  to  compare 
and  combine  new  and  old  ideas,  in  order  that 
connection  and  harmony  be  established  between 
them  and  that  a  general  principle  may  be  ex- 
tracted from  them.  In  section  4  the  extracted 
principle  "  that  we  must  not  forget  what  we  are 
told  to  do,"  is  stated  in  the  form  of  a  categorical 
imperative,  while  in  the  final  section  this  general 
mandate  is  applied  to  the  particular  instances  of 
the  child's  duty  to  greet  his  teacher  or  other  per- 
sons whom  he  may  happen  to  meet  on  the  street, 
and  his  obligation  to  remember  everything  his 
mother  may  bid  him  do. 

Is  it  too  much  to  say  that  such  methodical 
treatment  of  a  story  must  kill  any  interest  chil- 
dren might  otherwise  have  felt  in  it,  and  neutral- 
ize any  influence  it  might  have  exerted  upon 
them  ?  Constant  interruptions  break  the  contin- 
uity of  the  narrative  and  distract  the  attention  of 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT   OF   LITERATURE    81 

the  little  listeners.  The  reiterated  demands  for 
repetition  of  the  story  up  to  a  certain  point  must 
antagonize  minds  eager  to  hasten  toward  its  cli- 
max. In  the  struggle  to  drag  above  the  threshold 
of  consciousness  all  that  children  may  know  about 
different  foods,  and  the  manner  of  preparing 
them,  the  minimum  of  interest  which  has  survived 
interruptions,  distractions,  and  forced  repetitions 
must  be  effectually  strangled.  Finally,  the  anti- 
climax. "  Do  you  always  remember  to  greet  the 
teacher  ?  "  can  appeal  only  to  the  moral  sense  of 
little  prigs  who  lack  all  sense  of  humor. 

Several  false  psychologic  assumptions  are  in- 
volved in  the  methodical  treatment  of  literature. 
It  is  a  grave  mistake  to  suppose  that  children 
should  precipitate  in  the  form  of  conscious  and 
compelling  principles  the  feelings  stirred  within 
them  by  the  presentation  of  typical  characters, 
collisions,  and  catastrophes.  On  this  subject  Her- 
bart  himself  has  written  wisely,  and  it  seems 
strange  that  his  disciples  should  have  departed 
so  far  from  the  counsel  of  their  master.  "  Inter- 
rupt a  narrative,"  he  says,  "  with  moral  precepts 
and  children  will  find  you  a  wearisome  narrator. 
.  .  .  But  give  to  them  an  interesting  story,  rich 
in  incidents,  relationships,  characters,  strictly  in 
accordance  with  psychological  truth,  and  not  be- 
yond the  feelings  and  ideas  of  children;  make  no 
effort  to  depict  the  worst  or  the  best,  only  let  a 


82  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

faint,  half-unconscious  moral  tact  secure  that  the 
interest  of  the  story  tends  away  from  the  bad 
toward  the  good,  the  just,  the  right;  then  you  will 
see  how  the  child's  attention  is  fixed  upon  it ;  how 
it  seeks  to  discover  the  truth  and  think  over  all 
sides  of  the  matter;  how  the  many-sided  material 
calls  forth  a  many-sided  judgment,  how  the  charm 
of  change  ends  in  preference  for  the  best."  * 
Fidelity  to  these  suggestions  would  do  away  with 
four  of  the  five  steps  of  method,  and  call  upon 
the  narrator  only  for  the  one  feat  of  vivid  presen- 
tation. 

The  ascent  of  mind  is  from  the  particular  fact, 
through  the  symbol  to  the  concept  or  general  idea. 
By  the  word  symbol,  as  here  used,  is  meant  that 
change  which  takes  place  in  a  mental  image  when 
ceasing  to  be  a  mere  copy  of  some  external  person, 
action,  or  event,  it  begins  to  translate  the  inner 
meanings  of  nature  and  of  human  life.  In  this 
sense  the  personages  and  collisions  of  literature 
are  symbolic,  because  they  present  general  types 
of  character  and  experience  under  the  revealing 
disguise  of  concrete  examples.  A  good  story  must 
call  forth  in  the  mind  of  those  who  listen  to  it 
^a  series  of  vivid  mental  images,  and  the  total 
series  of  images  must  converge  toward  the  goal  of 
8ome_  general    idea.      To    picture    the    deeds    of 

>  Science  of  Education,  Herbart.     Felkin's  translation,  pp. 
88,89. 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT   OF   LITERATURE    83 

David,  Achilles,  Curtius,  is  not  merely  to  run 
through  the  mind  a  train  of  images,  but  to  speed 
the  train  toward  a  terminus  in  the  definition  of 
heroism.  On  the  other  hand  no  mistake  can  be 
greater  than  to  forestall  the  arrival  of  mind  at 
the  terminus  of  a  general  idea  by  either  forcing 
upon  it  an  external  definition  or  dragging  such 
definition  prematurely  from  its  own  reluctant 
subconscious  depths.  A  concept  has  been  defined 
as  a  rule  for  the  formation  of  images.^  The  im- 
ages created  by  genius  conform  to  true  rules,  and 
therefore  assist  the  mind  to  grasp  true  rules.  Any 
general  type  of  character  will  be  more  or  less  ade- 
quately apprehended,  as  it  calls  up  in  memory 
a  larger  or  smaller  number  of  illustrative  images. 
Such  images  hovering  around  the  general  idea 
are  like  the  separate  child  angels  whose  faces  in 
many  old  pictures  blend  in  the  halo  which  sur- 
rounds the  head  of  some  devout  saint.  The  se- 
verest criticism  to  be  made  upon  the  methodical 
treatment  of  literature  is  that  it  refuses  to  nas- 
cent thought  that  lingering  contemplation  of 
truths  incarnate  through  which  alone  it  can  mount 
securely  toward  truth  universal. 

A  second  psychologic  assumption  no  less  prac- 
tically misleading  than  that  just  considered  is 
that  new  facts  seize  upon  the  mind  with  greater 

» Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  W.  T.  Harris, 
p.  38. 


84  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

force  when  they  readily  fuse  with  familiar  ideas. 
Let  us  boldly  announce  the  converse  of  this  as- 
sumption and  declare  that  new  facts  seize  upon 
the  mind  with  greater  power  when  they  antago- 
nize familiar  experience.  We  recall  Plato's  af- 
^  firmation  that  knowledge  begins  with  wonder,  and 
we  know  LhaL  Wonder  arises  when  some  new  ob- 
j  ect  or  event  refuses  to  blend  with  previous  knowl- 
edga  The  Wonderful  Kettle  is  a  good  story, 
because  it  startles  the  mind  with  a  kitchen  uten- 
sil which  can  cook  at  command,  thrills  the  free 
soul  with  a  glad  sense  of  free  power,  and  hints 
that  freedom  implies  obedience  to  law.  It  is 
pathologically  treated  when  attention  is  diverted 
from  its  inspiring  idea  by  tedious  rehearsal  of  the 
manner  of  preparing  different  foods  and  by  the 
hammering  of  such  minor  moralities  as  greeting 
acquaintances  met  on  the  street.  There  is  more 
apperceiving  energy  in  the  feeling  of  astonish- 
ment than  in  any  existent  store  of  consciously 
related  ideas.  It  may  possibly  be  open  to  debate 
whether  Herbart  really  held  that  "  apperception 
conforms  exclusively  to  older  concepts  which  are 
superior  in  strength  to  the  new,"  ^  but  there  can 
be  no  doubt  of  the  fact  that  his  disciples  place  un- 
due emphasis  upon  that  form  of  apperception 
which  assimilates  a  new  experience  to  the  older 
content  of  consciousness,   and   are   somewhat  ob- 

»  Apperception,  Lange,  p.  260. 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT   OF   LITERATURE    85 

livious  of  the  constitutional  necessity  of  mind  to 
make  itself  foreign  to  itself,  in  order  that  it  may 
come  to  itself.  Hence,  their  practical  exercises 
tend  perpetually  toward  repetition  of  the  familiar 
and  elaboration  of  the  obvious. 

A  third  psychologic  fallacy  lurking  in  the 
methodicaT  treatment  of  literature  is  that  it  is 
either  possible  or  desirable  for  young  children  to 
be  made  aware  of  all  that  may  be  going  on  within 
their  own  minds.  Ignoring  the  vast  difference 
between  knowing,  and  the  knowing  of  knowing, 
this  treatment  calls  for  acts  of  "  second  inten- 
tion," possible  only  to  the  attained  introspective 
power  of  mature  intellects.  One  of  the  characters 
in  Wilhelm  Meister  remarks  "  that  it  is  the  na- 
ture of  the  Germans  that  they  bear  heavily  on 
everything,  and  that  everything  bears  heavily  on 
them."  The  educators  responsible  for  the  me- 
thodical treatment  of  literature  paid  the  penalty  of 
being  Germans.  So  did  Grube,  when  he  expected 
of  little  children  exhaustive  and  exhausting  analy- 
ses of  numbers  up  to  ten.  Germany  is  the  deep- 
est thinking  nation  in  the  world,  and  through  her 
heroes  of  contemplation  leads  mankind.  But  her 
lesser  sons  sometimes  have  to  bear  the  defect  of 
her  surpassing  merit. 

Shall  I  defy  the  coward  fear  which  shakes  my 
soul,  and  risk  the  horror  of  relegation  to  that 
limbo   of   outgrown    absurdities  wherein   wander 


86  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  ghosts  of  faculty  psychologists,  by  avowing 
my  conviction  that  the  motive  of  the  appeal  which 
the  methodical  treatment  of  literature  makes  to 
that  form  of  mental  activity  commonly  called  the 
understanding  is  directly  traceable  to  the  Her- 
bartian  dictum  that  the  "  soul  is  a  simple  wherein 
nothing  exists  but  ideas,  their  relations  and  in- 
teractions." Such  an  analysis  of  mind  predis- 
poses pedagogy  toward  undue  accent  upon  the 
relations  between  conscious  ideas,  and  undue  neg- 
lect both  of  the  feelings  which  hold  ideas  in 
solution  and  of  the  deeds  through  which  they  are 
precipitated  in  crystal  forms  of  thought.  Mind  is 
an  energy,  one  and  indivisible;  feeling,  willing, 
and  knowing  are  special  modifications  of  this  en- 
ergy ;  sense-perception,  memory,  imagination,  im- 
derstanding,  reason  are  special  modifications  of 
that  form  of  mental  activity  which  we  call  know- 
ing ;  all  the  forms  of  mental  energy  interpenetrate, 
and  at  no  given  moment  is  the  mind  exclusively 
determined  as  any  one  form.  Nevertheless,  it  re- 
mains true  that  in  different  stages  of  development, 
and  at  different  moments  in  all  stages  of  develop- 
ment different  forms  of  mental  activity  are  pre- 
dominant over  others,  and  that  in  childhood  the 
predominating  form  is  not  understanding  which 
laboriously  seeks  the  relations  between  conscious 
concepts,  but  imagination  joyously  transmuting 
sense-images    into   general    ideas.      Childhood    is 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT   OF   LITERATURE    87 

not  the  age  of  prose,  but  the  age  of  poetry,  and 
it  is  a  caricature  of  education  to  attempt  to  make 
children  aware  of  relations  and  principles  which 
should  only  stir  in  the  semiconscious  depths  of 
the  soul  as  prescient  surmises. 

The  methodical  treatment  of  stories  is  not  only 
an  offense  against  the  spirit  of  childhood ;  it  is  also 
an  assault  both  upon  the  form  and  spirit  of  litera- 
ture. The  supreme  merit  of  literature  is  its  re- 
spect for  human  freedom.  It  wins  by  allurement, 
but  never  coerces  by  authority.  It  announces  no 
moral  imperatives,  but  appeals  to  "  admiration, 
hope,  and  love  " ;  stirs  liberating  and  aspiring  im- 
pulses, and  is  content  to  warn  against  evil  by 
portraying  its  ugliness  and  tracing  its  results. 
"  The  playhovise,"  says  one  of  George  Macdon- 
ald's  canny  Scotch  heroes,  "  is  whaur  ye  gang  to 
see  what  comes  o'  things  as  ye  canna  follow  out 
in  ordinar  life."  Good  stories  well  told  enrich 
the  mind  with  concrete  types  of  character  which 
interpret  human  nature,  and  concrete  situations 
which  hint  solutions  of  the  problems  of  human 
life.  Commenting  upon  the  characters  in  Shake- 
speare's plays  Goethe  says  that  they  "  act  before 
us  as  if  they  were  watches  whose  dial  plates  and 
cases  were  of  crystal  which  pointed  out  according 
to  their  use  the  course  of  the  hours  and  minutes, 
while  at  the  same  time  you  could  discern  the  com- 
binations   of    wheels    and    springs    that    turned 


88  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

them."  In  actual  life  we  often  fail  to  discern 
the  feelings  out  of  which  convictions  arise,  and 
to  connect  actions  with  the  convictions  from  which 
they  result.  Any  true  literary  product  makes  us 
aware  of  this  intimate  connection  between  im- 
pulses, deeds,  and  convictions,  and  also  traces  the 
social  recoil  of  each  deed  upon  the  doer.  Thus 
it  helps  us  to  understand  the  springs  of  action  in 
ourselves  and  others,  and  to  define  to  ourselves 
which  actions  and  motives  make  for  and  which 
against  the  life  of  man  in  society.  Yet  it  knows 
no  thus,  no  therefore,  and  no  must,  and  never  ap- 
peals directly  either  to  understanding  or  con- 
science. Its  animating  principle  is  neither  truth 
nor  goodness,  but  beauty.  Free  itself  through  love, 
it  dares  to  trust  our  love  and  freedom,  and  by  this 
generous  faith  calls  forth  the  energy  through 
which  "  we  erect  ourselves  above  ourselves." 

My  reason  for  dwelling  at  such  length  upon  the 
psychologic  fallacies  embalmed  in  the  methodical 
treatment  of  literature  is  that  the  influence  of 
this  method  has  been  felt  in  the  kindergarten. 
As  a  single  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  stories 
have  been  tangled  in  a  web  of  collateral  informa- 
tion and  of  the  more  or  less  ludicrous  and  far- 
fetched moral  imperatives  distilled  from  them,  I 
quote  from  the  Kindergarten  Review  for  Decem- 
ber, 1904  and  January,  1905,  some  Suggestions 
for  Programmes  based  upon  Nursery  Rhymes. 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT   OF   LITERATURE    89 

JACK  AND   JILL 

What  a  little  boy  and  little  girl  did  to  help  their 
mother:  What  the  water  was  to  be  used  for  (washing, 
drinking,  etc.)  How  many  have  helped  their  mothers 
this  summer?  Children's  bumps:  What  to  do  for 
them;  must  be  brave  and  learn  to  endure  pain.  The 
country  well;  well  sweep;  bucket  and  rope;  pump  vs. 
city  faucets. 

DING  DONG  BELL 

The  kind  little  boy.  What  took  him  to  the  well. 
Kindness  to  animals.  Why  we  love  the  pussies. 
What  they  do  to  help  in  the  house. 

LITTLE   BOY   BLUE 

Care  of  sheep  and  cows.  Not  only  fed  but  kept 
from  danger.  They  trample  the  cornfields.  Children 
must  not  stop  to  play  when  sent  on  errands,  or  sleep 
when  they  should  come  to  the  kindergarten.  Haycocks 
make  a  nice  sleeping  place.  Straw  rides.  Calling 
sheep  and  cows  by  horns. 

THKEE  LITTLE  KITTENS 

What  mittens  are  made  of;  difference  between  mit- 
tens and  gloves.  Which  keep  the  hands  warmer? 
Careless  children  lose  things — mittens,  hats,  books. 
Need  to  be  taught  to  find  them.  Children  can  wash 
little  things  and  so  help  mother. 

PUSSY   CAT,  PUSSY  CAT 

London  a  big  city — bigger  than  New  York.  Queen 
lived  there;   good  Queen  Victoria;  queens  wear  fine 


90  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

clothes;  live  in  grand  houses;  but  mice  even  get  in 
them.  Pussy  cat  scares  them  away.  Little  children 
may  help  great  folks. 


THERE   WAS   A  CROOKED  MAN 

Did  you  ever  see  a  crooked  man  or  child?  Should 
never  make  fun  of  such;  should  be  glad  if  you  are 
straight;  hoAv  much  is  done  for  crippled  children; 
hospital  at  Forty-second  Street.  The  doctor  from  Vi- 
enna who  operated  on  Armour's  child. 

Some  years  ago  I  was  told  of  a  class,  the  mem- 
bers of  wliieh  were  studying  the  Iliad  as  a 
manual  of  botan5',  numismatics,  and  ancient 
geography.  The  wrath  of  Achilles,  which  the  sov- 
ereign poet  announces  as  the  theme  of  his  epic, 
was  a  subject  indifferent  to  these  eager  searchers 
for  names  of  unknown  plants,  lost  localities,  and 
vanished  coins.  Is  there  not  a  similar  profana- 
tion of  the  best  literature  for  little  children  when 
our  nursery  classics  are  made  points  of  departure 
for  information  about  wells,  pumps,  faucets,  mit- 
tens, gloves,  hospitals,  surgical  operations,  and 
children's  bumps?  And  if  Mother  Goose  be  so 
lovable  that,  despite  this  distortion,  she  can  still 
allure  childish  hearts,  will  even  her  charms  prevail 
Avhen  her  every  rhyme  is  made  the  text  of  a  moral 
homily  culminating  in  a  practical  applicatioli  to 
the  duties  of  daily  life  ?  I  am  glad  I  was  a  child 
in  the  good  old  days  when  I  could  enjoy  the  com- 


METHODICAL  TREATMENT  OF   LITERATURE    91 

radeship  of  Jack  and  Jill  without  a  solemn 
thought  of  duty  to  mj  mother-  or  an  arresting 
sense  of  how  heroically  I  should  bear  my  bumps ; 
when  Tommy  Stout  and  Little  Boy  Blue  preached 
only  by  example,  and  when  the  Crooked  Man  him- 
self declared  a  secret  of  which  the  interpreter 
who  calls  upon  children  to  rejoice  that  they  are 
straight,  and  warns  them  against  making  fun  of 
deformed  people,  has  never  dreamed.^ 

In  brief  epitome  of  the  foregoing  criticisms,  I 
challenge  the  methodical  treatment  of  stories  be- 
cause it  forces  attention  to  the  relations  between 
consciously  defined  ideas,  whereas  the  aim  of 
literature  is  to  interpret  the  meaning  of  nature 
and  life  through  concrete  images,  and  the  spirit 
of  childhood  demands  such  images  as  modes  of 

•  In  addition  to  the  inherent  defect  of  its  principle  the 
systematic  treatment  of  literature  constantly  betrays  its 
votaries  into  the  error  of  diverting  attention  from  the  true 
implication  of  a  story  or  rhyme  by  harping  upon  a  moral  which 
is  foreign  to  its  intent.  It  seems  incredible,  for  example,  that 
moral  exhortations  to  be  grateful  for  straight  backs  and 
warnings  against  laughing  at  deformed  persons  could  be 
deduced  from  a  rhyme  which  fairly  bristles  with  the  state- 
ment that  a  crooked  mind  must  perforce  see  a  crooked  world. 
As  Mrs.  Whitney  puts  it  in  Mother  Goose  for  Grown  Folks: 

"Once  begin  with  a  crook 
You'll  go  on  with  a  crook; 

Crooked  ways,  crooked  luck,  crooked  people, 
Crooked  eyes,  .crooked  mind. 
Crooked  guide  posts  will  find 

Yes,  a  crook  in  the  very  church  steeple!" 


92  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

transit  from  particular  facts  to  general  concepts. 
The  stories  selected  for  little  children  should  fur- 
nish clews  to  experience  by  presenting  elementary 
types  of  character  and  situation,  and  they  should 
be  told  in  simple,  straightforward  fashion  with- 
out repetitions,  questions,  the  intrusion  of  useful 
information,  the  distillation  of  general  principles, 
or  the  hammering  and  pounding  of  minor  moral- 
ities. 

The  concentric  programme  and  the  methodical 
treatment  of  literature  are  the  characteristic 
features  of  what  can  only  be  described  as  an  at- 
tempted revolution  in  pedagogy.  The  procedure 
for  which  it  contends  has  already  refuted  itself 
in  practice.  Seeking  a  common  core  for  mathe- 
matical, biologic,  and  humane  studies,  it  lost  the 
specific  core  of  each  study.  Blind  to  the  priority 
of  action  over  conscious  thought,  it  foolishly  at- 
tempted to  build  character  out  of  "  presentations." 
It  expected  from  immature  minds  an  impossible 
act  of  unification.  It  refused  to  trust  the  allure- 
ment of  the  beautiful  and  the  repulsiveness  of  the 
ugly.  It  aroused  antagonism  through  its  inces- 
sant and  intrusive  good  advice.  Are  we  not 
forced  to  conclude  that  the  revolution  attempted 
was  a  mistake? 


CHAPTER    IV 


LITERATUEE    AND    LIFE 


The  nursery  rhymes  transmitted  by  word  of 
mouth  from  generation  to  generation  are  one  of 
the  instrumentalities  through  which  mankind  be- 
gins the  making  of  men.  In  them  is  preserved 
for  childhood  the  child-thought  of  humanity. 
They  portray  elementary  types  of  character  and 
elementary  problems  of  life  and  they  have  been 
sifted  through  the  minds  of  so  many  generations 
of  men  living  under  so  many  varieties  of  condi- 
tions that  they  have  lost  all  local,  temporal,  and 
accidental  features.  They  are  the  world-litera- 
ture of  the  infancy  of  our  race,  and  correspond 
remotely  with  the  few  supreme  world-poems  which 
touch  the  hearts  and  solve  the  problems  of  all 
mankind. 

It  may  help  us  to  appreciate  the  universality 

of  our  nursery  rhymes  to  recall  to  mind  a  few  of 

the  typical  characters  they  celebrate.      Who  has 

not  blushed  to  discover  Cross  Patch  in  herself? 

Who  has  not  met  many  a  Jack  Horner  pluming 

himself  on  the  pie  he  had  no  part  in  making  ? 

93 


94  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Who  has  not  fled  from  that  scold  of  Surrey,  whose 
overzealous  energy  has  ruined  her  temper  ?  Who 
refuses  sympathy  to  the  mother  of  a  progeny  so 
numerous  and  so  clamorous  that  they  distract  in- 
tellect and  destroy  serenity;  and  what  human 
heart  can  be  cold  to  the  passion  of  that  village 
wife  of  long  ago,  smarting  under  the  disappoint- 
ment of  a  husband  "  no  bigger  than  her  thumb  " 
angered  by  the  shiftlessness  shown  in  his  ungar- 
tered  hose  and  stung  to  contempt  by  the  necessity 
of  prodding  him  into  rhino-hygienic  habits  ?  One 
by  one  they  rise  before  us,  these  defining  charac- 
ters of  our  nursery  rhymes.  Here  is  the  old  man 
of  the  wilderness  still  asking  his  pointless  ques- 
tions: yonder  the  woman,  angry  without  cause, 
sticks  fast  in  her  apple  tree ;  the  soul  forever  rest- 
less, because  forever  seeking  satisfaction  in  "  vic- 
tuals and  drink,"  looks  out  at  us  through  discon- 
,  tented  eyes :  the  man  who  has  made  himself  a  mere 
toy,  because  he  would  do  nothing  but  play,  follows 
the  drudge  dulled  by  unremitting  toil;  and,  last 
figure  of  our  moving  panorama,  we  recognize  that 
perpetual  type  of  commonplace  humanity,  Solo- 
mon Grundy,  about  whom  his  biographer  can 
only  record  that  he  was  born,  christened,  wedded, 
and  that  he  sickened  and  died.^ 

The  value  of  typical  characters  is  that  they  be- 

'  I  borrow  many  of  these  illustrations  from  Mrs.  .A.  D.  T. 
Whitney's  Mother  Goose  for  Grown  Folks. 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE  95 

gin  the  work  of  sorting  humanity  into  classes. 
One  dr  the  great  mfstakes  made  in  psychology  is 
to  suppose  that  the  mind  proceeds  by  abstraction, 
comparison,  and  generalization  to  general  ideas. 
If  the  books  on  child  study  prove  any  one  fact 
more  conclusively  than  all  others,  it  is  that  nas- 
cent thought  seizes  upon  every  single  object  as 
representative  of  a  class,  and  that  to  little  chil- 
dren all  men  are  papas,  all  animals  bow  wows,  and 
all  ceilings  skies.  The  lesson  of  this  fact  is  that 
the  attention  of  children  should  be  direcjed  to 
those  objects,  actions,  persons,  and  events  which 
are  representative  of  true  classes,  in  order  that 
they  may  not  lose  themselves  in  the  labyrinth  of 
experience.  The  typical  characters  of  literature 
give  clews  to  human  nature  and  act  as  "  assimila- 
tive nets,"  with  which  the  mind  fishes  for,  catches, 
and  holds  different  kinds  of  men.  That  all  this 
fishing,  catching,  and  holding  is  without  the  con- 
scious connivance  of  the  fisher  goes  without  say- 
ing. Indeed,  the  fact  that  it  should  never  be 
made  conscious  is  the  one  point  which  must  be 
insisted  upon  out  of  pity  for  tormented  childhood, 
reverence  for  literature  and  insight  into  the  proc- 
esses of  mental  development. 

Passing  from  the  study  of  nursery  rhymes  to 
that  of  traditional^  tales  we  find  in  the  latter  a 
significant  advance  which  gives  them  unique  and 
permanent  value.     Out  of  the  classes  into  which 


96  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

Immanity  has  been  ordered  emerges  the  ideal  hu- 
man being.  This  ideal  man  is  first  of  all  a  free- 
man of  the  universe.  He  is  emancipated  from  all 
material  needs.  He  is_  visible  and  invisible  at  Ar 
will.  He  knows  the  secrets  of  nature,  and  she  ia-^ 
plastic  to  his  purpose.  Space  constrains  him  not, 
and  he  has  triumphed  over  time.  Where  he  would 
be  there  he  is.  What  he  would  do  he  infallibly 
accomplishes.  His  character  is  drawn  with 
strokes  as  telling  as  they  are  few.  He  is  brave, 
kind,  generous,  pitiful,  teachable,  and  prompt  to 
serve.  His  life  is  spent  slaying  giants  and  rescu- 
ing imprisoned  princesses.  In  a  word,  he  is  man's 
earliest  vision  of  his  own  ideal  self  as  conqueror 
and  deliverer,  and  to  acquaint  little  children  with 
him  is  to  quicken  the  ideal  self  in  them. 

In  the  myths  of  Greece,  of  Rome,  and  of  the 
Teutonic  peoples  the  rude  outline  of  ideal  human- 
ity sketched  in  household  tales  takes  on  solid 
form  and  resplendent  color.  The  hero  is  now  on 
one  side  of  supernatural  origin.  Often,  however, 
he  has  a  contrasting  twin,  a  brother  who  betrays 
him,  or  a  sister  whom  he  must  deliver.  Lacking 
snch^a  twin  Ijfl^has  upon  his  otherwise  invulner- 
able body  one  vulnerable  spot.  Because  of  omens 
pointing  to  his  future  greatness  he  is  driven  from  . 
his  home.  He  becomes  a  tireless  wanderer.  Dur- 
ing his  wanderings  he  overcomes  all  kinds  of  mon- 
sters.      He    gains    supernatural   knowledge.      As 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE  97 

moral  consciousness  deepens  in  the  old  story-tell- 
ers he  is  set  to  do  deeds  which  involve  his  own 
sacrifice.  But  this  sacrifice  is  a  prelude  to  final 
victory,  and  the  myth  ends  with  the  return  of 
the  hero  to  his  home  and  his  triumphal  ascent  of 
his  rightful  throne. 

Th^s^t^picalhero,  son  of  a  god,  one  of  twins, 
exposed  to  fatal  injury  by  a  vulnerable  spot, 
haunted  by  diriens,  persecuted  and  banished,  seek- 
ing service  afar,  slaying  monsters,  gaining  super- 
natural knowledge,  returning  to  his  native  coun- 
try, freeing  his  twin  brother,  ascending  his  throne 
— what  is  he  if  not  an  embodiment  of  all  that  is 
deepest  in  the  human  soul  and  in  human  life? 
With  the  impulse  to  claim  for  him  divine  hered- 
ity, the  psychologic  Occident  is  born  and  the  wres- 
tle of  centuries  begun  between  races  content  to 
hold  that  man  is  an  accident  of  the  universe  and 
races  whose  hope,  whose  joy,  and  whose  high  des- 
tiny are  bound  up  in  the  faith  that  there  is  kin- 
ship between  man  and  God.  The  evil  twin  ap- 
prises us  that  imagination  is  haunted  by  man's 
dquble  selfhood,  and  the  struggle  between  him  and 
his  nobler  brotHer  celebrates  that  holy  war  where- 
in the  soul  is  at  once  hero  and  betrayer,  the  bat- 
tle ground,  the  battle,  the  temporary  defeat,  and 
the  final  victory.  Out  of  a  similar  foreboding 
springs  the  impulse  to  give  the  hero  that  spot  of 
fateful  import  whose  meaning  is  that  the  touch 


98  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

of  human  imperfection  clings  even  to  nobly  as- 
piring and  achieving  souls.  Finally,  the  omens 
which  drive  the  hero  from  his  home  are  mythi- 
cal expressions  of  the  fact  that  commonplace  men 
are  always  pitted  against  the  great  man  and  do 
their  best  to  get  rid  of  him. 

The  wanderings  of  the  hero  need  little  interpre- 
tation. Within  the  soul  "  latitude  widens  and 
longitude  lengthens  " ;  "  within  it  are  zones,  seas, 
and  continents,"  but  without  physical  geography 
spiritual  geography  would  be  forever  unknown. 
Therefore  man,  who  is  one  world  "  has  another  to 
attend  him,"  and  ceaselessly  exploring  the  earth 
he  discovers  himself. 

As  the  wanderings  of  the  hero  foreshadow  the 
triumphs  of  intellect,  so  his  conquests  predict 
the  triumphs  of  will.  The  attendant  world  must 
be  not  only  interpreted  but  dominated.  The 
Nemean  lion  and  the  Lernean  hydra  must  be 
slain;  the  Arcadian  hind  and  the  Erymanthian 
boar  captured  and  domesticated;  the  stables  of 
Augeus  must  be  cleansed;  the  golden  apples 
brought  from  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides,  and 
even  Hades  must  be  invaded  and  its  guardian  led 
to  the  upper  world.  The  destiny  of  man  is  to 
subdue  and  transform  the  earth  and  dwell  in  it 
securely  its  master  and  its  lord. 

As  I  ponder  the  deep  truths  which  steal  into 
the  heart  through  the  gateway  of  our  occidental 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  99 

myths  there  comes  to  me  a  new  and  thrilling  sug- 
gestion. Men's  souls  to-day  are  sad  because  na- 
ture seems  to  them  so  totally  depraved.  But  what 
if  mere  brute  man,  who  is  all  he  should  not  be, 
needs  as  his  counterpart  a  brute  nature  which  is 
all  it  should  not  be?  What  if  being  free,  man 
must  create  himself  and  if  he  can  only  create 
himself  by  recreating  his  world  ?  What  if,  her 
own  great  deed  accomplished  when  man  is  born, 
nature  lays  herself  at  his  feet  and  appeals  to  him 
to  make  her  all  she  could  never  be  ?  What  if  our 
fields  and  gardens,  our  domesticated  animals,  our 
villages,  towns,  and  cities,  our  railways  stretching 
connecting  lines  across  the  continents,  our  steam- 
ships plying  their  uniting  course  across  the  seas, 
mean  that  man  is  slowly  creating  an  ideal  world, 
and  through  this  creation  is  fashioning  an  ideal 
self? 

Perhaps  the  deepest  thought  which  in  obscure 
presentiment  hovers  before  the  creators  of  occi- 
dental myth  is  that  the  hero  can  win  his  cause 
only  by  sacrificing  himself.  "  Woe  is  me,"  says 
Thetis  in  the  Iliad,  "  Woe  is  me  the  mother  of  a 
hero."  For  a  hero  must  serve,  a  hero  must  suffer, 
the  highest  hero  must  die  for  men.  Yet  since  in 
the  eternal  order  sacrifice  and  self -fulfillment  are 
correlative  ideas  the  hero  though  he  die  shall  live 
forever  and  reign  forever  on  his  rightful  throne. 

To  know  this  hero  of  occidental  myth  is  to  love 


100  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

him  and  to  grow  into  his  likeness.  We  invert  the 
relationship  between  life  and  literature  when  we 
say  that  literature  copies  life.  The  truer  state- 
ment is  that  life  copies  literature,  and  that  the 
heroes  of  myth,  legend,  and  poetry  create  the 
heroes  of  history.  Hegel  reminds  us  that  the 
history  of  Greece  had  its  inception  in  the  ideal 
youth,  Achilles,  and  its  consummation  in  the 
actual  youth,  Alexander.  The  question  is  perti- 
nent whether,  lacking  the  hero  of  the  Trojan  War, 
Greece  could  ever  have  incarnated  her  spirit  in 
the  hero  of  Arbela.  Or,  to  face  frankly  the  su- 
preme example  of  the  power  of  literature  over 
life,  who  dare  deny  that  without  the  Messianic 
dreams  of  Hebrew  prophets  the  world  might  still 
be  awaiting  its  Messiah.  "  Ever  before  us  jour- 
neys the  mighty  ideal;  it  never  was  known  to 
fall  in  the  rear."  The  prescient  soul  haunted 
with  visions  of  its  higher  self  flings  a  portrait 
upon  the  canvas  of  literature.  Common  men  gaze 
upon  the  portrait  until  their  dull  and  mean  exist- 
ence becomes  intolerable,  and  goaded  by  the 
beauty  of  the  ideal  they  cease  not  from  their 
striving  until  they  have  incarnated  it  in  life. 

No  less  significant  than  the  identities  of  occi- 
dental myth  are  the  distinctive  traits  which  re- 
veal the  racial  souls  of  Gregjee^i^^Qf^omej^  and  of 
the  Germanic  peoples.  The  hero  of  Greek  legend 
is  above  all  beautiful;  the  hero  of  Roman  legend 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE  101 

patriotic^  the  hero  of  Germanic  legend  insistent 
upon  the  ri^ts  aiid  claims  of  his  own  individu- 
ality. Achilles  is  the  golden  youth  of  the  world; 
Curtius  the  devoted  youth  of  the  world;  Siegfried 
the  daring,  defiant,  jubilant,  self -destructive 
youth  of  the  worldv 

History  knows  not  one  but  many  chosen  na- 
tions, and  Greece  was  the  nation  elect  of  history  to 
realize  the  ideal  of  freedom  in  the  form  of  beauty. 
She  transfigured  all  the  phenomena  of  nature 
into  human  forms  of  majesty  and  loveliness.  She 
interpreted  the  higher  impulses  of  the  human 
heart  as  mandates  of  the  gods,  and  as  she  had 
made  nature  human,  made  man  divine.  She  was 
the  great  play-nation  of  the  world,  and  her  sons 
created  graceful  and  beautiful  bodies  by  calling 
into  balanced  exercise  all  typical  forms  of  phys- 
ical activity.  She  was  the  great  art  nation  of 
the  world,  and  having  created  majestic  and  beau- 
tiful men,  carved  in  imperishable  marble  her  more 
majestic  and  beautiful  statues  of  heroes  and  gods. 
Greece  was  the  great  literary  nation  of  the  world, 
summoning  from  the  depths  of  her  rhythmic 
spirit  the  noblest  meters;  creating  not  only  the 
epic,  the  drama,  and  the  lyric,  but  nearly  every 
form  knowm  either  to  prose  or  poetry ;  elaborating 
the  criticism  of  language  as  the  material  of  liter- 
ary art  and  bequeathing  to  the  world  what  has 
ever  since  remained  its  standard  work  of  literary 


102  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

criticism.  She  was  the  standard-bearing  nation 
of  the  Occident,  and  alike  in  myth  and  history 
hurled  her  high  defiance  against  Asiatic  polyg- 
amy, despotism,  pantheism,  and  that  perverted 
self-renunciation  which  leaves  no  self  to  renounce. 
Finally,  Greece  was  the  great  philosophic  nation 
of  the  world  and  through  the  Platonic  doctrine  of , 
the  self-moved  and  the  Aristotelian  insight  into 
completely  realized  self -activity  (entelechy)  pro- 
claimed the  original  source  and  ultimate  goal  of 
that  freedom  whose  varied  incarnation  had  been 
the  incitement  of  all  her  historic  striving.  For 
all  these  reasons  Greece  was  and  shall  forever  re- 
main the  great  culture-nation  of  the  world,  and 
her  appeal  to  each  new  age  and  generation  is  "  to 
mount  from  fair  forms  to  fair  deeds,  and  from 
fair  deeds  to  fair  thoughts,"  until  it  stand  at 
last  in  presence  of  that  "  uncreated  loveliness," 
which  to  behold  is  to  adore,  and  to  adore  is  to  re- 
create. 

Beauty  is  the  only  spiritual  feature  of  matter 
— is,  indeed,  spirit  shining  through  matter.  The 
clod  is  not  beautiful,  but  there  is  beauty  in  the 
crystal  which  manifests  formative  energy  and  re- 
flects the  universal  light.  The  flower  is  more 
beautiful  than  the  crystal  because  it  reveals  a 
freer  activity.  The  human  form  disciplined  by 
selected  exercises  is  beautiful  because  it  is  ideal 
activity  incarnate.     Human  character  is  beautiful 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  103 

when  through  self-restraint  and  self-direction  it 
has  achieved  spontaneous  accord  with  the  ideals 
of  freedom.  Human  speech  becomes  beautiful 
through  voluntary  subjection  to  the  ideal  re- 
straints of  musical  words,  lofty  diction,  rhythmic 
measures,  and  stately  cadences.  Always  and 
everywhere  beauty  is  the  outward  and  visible  sign 
of  freedom,  and  implies  self-restraint  and  self- 
transcendance.  Because  her  national  life  was  one 
long  wrestle  for  freedom,  Greece  is  the  great  re- 
vealer  of  beauty,  and  her  prototype  is  the  youth 
Achilles,  beautiful  in  form  and  feature;  beauti- 
ful in  his  prowess,  beautiful  when  bowed  with 
anguish  and  self-reproach,  he  bids  strife  to  perish 
from  among  gods  and  men;  beautiful  when  con- 
secrate to  death,  Athena  sets  about  his  head  a 
crown  of  golden  mist  and  from  it  makes  to  blaze 
a  dazzling  flame;  beautiful  most  of  all  when 
touched  by  tender  pity  for  an  enemy  at  his  mercy 
he  surrenders  to  aged  Priam  the  body  of  his  son. 
As  Greece  is  the  nation  elect  of  history  to  re- 
veal the  ideal  of  freedom  in  the  form  of  beauty, 
so  Rome  is  predestinedjffi.  the  world-spirit  to  em- 
body the  iHeal  of  freedom  in  the  corporate  forms 
of  will.  From  her  we  inherit  laws  preventing 
that  collision  of  each  with  all  which  reduces  rea- 
sonable action  to  zero,  and  reenforcing  the  valid 
deeds  of  individuals  with  the  strength  of  the  com- 
munity or  nation.     Lacking  the  common  tradi- 


104  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

tions  through  which  most  primitive  communities 
are  held  together  the  outlaws  who  settled  on  the 
seven  hills  became  the  originators  of  the  idea  of 
contract.  Since  in  a  contract  two  wills  combine 
there  is  suggested  a  common  will  superior  to  and 
transformative  of  individual  caprice.  In  the 
pledge  of  the  community  as  a  whole  to  maintain 
contracts  inviolate,  and  in  the  pledge  of  each  in- 
dividual to  honor  and  defend  the  community 
which  safeguards  his  rights,  this  higher  will  be- 
comes more  clearly  emergent.  Purpose  is  born 
in  men  and  new  words  are  coined  to  express  what 
it  contributes  to  the  shaping  of  character.*  Pur- 
poseful men  demand  purpose  in  nature,  and  a 
veritable  Ethics  of  the  Dust  is  created  by  put- 
ting purpose  into  every  fragment  of  the  external 
world  and  organizing  all  lesser  purposes  to  ac- 
complish the  supreme  purpose  of  the  state.  The 
human  heart  throbs  with  a  new  emotion  and  all 
Romans  become  .patriots.  The  mythical  embodi- 
ment of  patriotism   is    Curtius,    the   self-devoted 

•  "Through  the  study  of  Latin  the  boy  or  girl  gradually 
becomes  permeated  with  the  motives  of  that  serious-minded 
people.  He  comes  to  realize  the  special  significance  of  those 
words  that  express  the  ideals  of  Roman  character  (and  the 
ideals  of  all  character)  words  which  we  have  preserved  in  our 
translation  into  English — gravity,  soberness,  probity,  honesty, 
self-restraint,  austerity,  considerateness,  modesty,  patriot- 
ism."— Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  Wm.  T.  Harris, 
pp.  271-72.     (A  suggestion  of  Rosenkranz. — Ed.) 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  105 

youth  clad  in  shining  armor  and  leaping  into 
the  gulf  which  could  only  close  when  it  had  swal- 
lowed Rome's  most  precious  treasure.  To  the 
historic  lineage  of  this  mythical  hero  belong  Reg- 
ulus,  Cato,  and  Caesar,  the  Roman  armies  march- 
ing to  the  conquest  of  the  world  and  the  prae- 
torian courts  which  secure  military  conquests  by 
establishing  Roman  jurisprudence. 

Rome  falls  but  the  eternal  city  is  lifted  by  St. 
Augustine  out  of  earth  into  heaven,  and  in  the 
fullness  of  time  the  millennial  struggle  of  the 
Latin  mind,  and  the  aspiration  of  ten  silent  Chris- 
tian centuries  blend  in  the  soul  of  a  world  poet 
who  chants  "  Cosmic  patriotism "  in  immortal 
verse. 

To  know  and  love  Achilles  is  to  begin  to  love 
freedom  as  beautiful  personality  achieved  by  the 
self-creating  spirit  through  overcoming  the  natural 
self.  To  know  and  love  Curtius  is  to  hear  from 
afar  the  mighty  challenge  of  mankind  to  man,  to 
be  haunted  by  that  high  impulse  of  devotion  "  be- 
fore which  our  mortal  nature  trembles  in  sur- 
prise " ;  to  be  smitten  with  a  foreboding  that  the 
free  human  being  must  die  not  only  to  his  lower 
self  but  for  his  higher  self  incarnate  in  the  state. 
But  what  shall  be  said  of  Siegfried  ?  Does  his  de- 
fiant and  self-destroying  career  suggest  any  im- 
plication of  freedom  ?  Does  it  reveal  a  racial 
soul  ?     Does  it  perchance  forecast  a  racial  peril  ? 


106  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

The  varia^  Jribes_ol  the  Germanic  race  stand 
out  among  all  the  races  of  men  as  by  nature  most 
clamorous  for  satisfaction  of  immediate  impulse, 
and  most  insistent  upon  recognition  of  their  im- 
mediate personality.  They  will  do  what  they 
choose ;  they  will  be  valued  for  what  they  are,  and 
they  will  promptly  slay  any  man  who  dares  to 
interfere  with  their  free  action,  or  refuses  them 
the  honor  they  claim  as  their  due.  Bold,  spirited, 
adventurous,  fierce,  they  defy  nature,  other  men, 
and  all  the  gods.  Once  for  all  they  are  here  and 
they  will  make  good  their  right  to  be. 

We  need  only  look  within  and  around  us  to  as- 
sure ourselves  that  the  old  Teuton  and  Saxon  are 
still  very  much  alive.  "  I  must  be  loved  just  as 
I  am,"  whispers  the  maiden  descendant  of  Hen- 
gist  complacently,  unaware  that  she  is  merely 
reverberating  ancestral  impulse.  "  Knock  me 
down  if  you  can  and  if  not  get  knocked  down 
yourself,"  shouts  her  brother  to  his  mates.  "  The 
cowboy  on  the  American  border  lands,"  says  Dr. 
Harris,  "  announces  his  approach  to  a  settlement 
by  daring  the  whole  village  out  to  fight  him ;  the 
miners  of  Poker  Flat,  the  hunters  and  trappers  of 
the  ]N'orthern  Wilderness  manifest  also  a  chival- 
rous personality  which  demands  immediate  recog- 
nition, and  which  will  risk  life  without  the  slight- 
est hesitation  for  this  motive."  American  stories 
for  children  celebrate  the  adventures  of  boys  and 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  107 

girls  so  abundantly  able  to  protect,  support,  and 
educate  themselves  that  fathers  and  mothers  seem 
mere  relics  of  an  outgrown  past.  At  last  even 
education  falls  into  ancestral  toils,  and  declining 
upon  the  heresy  of  free  play  insists  as  the  latest 
discovery  in  method  that  children  can  become  all 
they  ought  by  doing  as  they  please. 

The  energy  of  life  beats  high  in  our  ancestral 
impulse,  and  I  for  one  would  not  surrender  my 
own  racial  inheritance  for  that  of  any  other  race. 
"  Other  peoples,"  says  Hegel,  "  have  definite  ob- 
jects in  which  they  seek  supremacy.  They  seek 
wealth  or  beauty,  or  abstract  right  or  power  or 
caste  distinction,  but  the  Teutonic  race  seeks  the- 
satisfaction  of  the  heart."  ^  The  free  spirit  ob- 
scurely aware  of  freedom  demands  that  freedom 
shall  be  honored.  The  contradiction  which  rends 
the  soul  of  all  Germanic  peoples  is  that  each  in- 
dividual claims  freedom  for  himself  alone  and 
blindly  identifies  freedom  with  the  gratification  of 
immediate  impulse.  Because  of  this  contradiction 
the  Germanic  races  are  the  most  savage  and  self- 
destructive  the  world  has  ever  known.  But  his- 
tory vindicates  all  her  chosen  peoples,  and  having 
charged  these  self-destroying  savages  with  regen- 
erate ideals  she  is  even  now  sending  them  forth 
to  redeem  the  world. 

So    mighty   is    the    defiance    of   the    Germanic 
•  Hegel's  Philosophy  of  History,  Eng.  trans!.,  p.  363. 


108  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

spirit  that  it  is  powerless  to  bring  forth  out  of 
itself  the  constraining  ideals  through  which  alone 
its  deepest  impulse  can  be  realized.  It  can,  how- 
ever, divine  the  destiny  its  soul  portends,  and  it 
has  adumbrated,  the  catastrophe  which  threatens 
it  in  that  tragic  myth  all  of  whose  chief  person- 
ages are  betrayed  by  imperative  impulse  into 
fatal  deeds  and  whose  climax  is  the  destruction 
of  gods  created  in  the  image  of  fated  men.  Of 
this  tragic  myth  the  story  of  Siegfried  is  an  in- 
tegral part.  A  great  genius  has  interpreted  his 
story  in  verse  and  music,  and  has  taught  us  all 
to  love  the  forest  lad  sounding  his  merry  horn; 
rushing  upon  fierce  beasts  through  pure  delight 
in  combat ;  forging  with  mighty  strokes  his  magic 
sword;  imitating  the  love  song  of  birds;  slaying 
the  dragon  and  possessing  himself  of  Tarnhelm 
and  ring;  breaking  the  spear  of  Wotan;  bursting 
through  the  wall  of  flame;  waking  and  winning 
the  sleeping  Valkyr  and  learning  from  her  the 
mystic  runes  which  should  have  made,  but  did  not 
make  him  wise.  No  story  in  all  the  world  paints 
such  an  appealing  picture  of  light-hearted,  way- 
ward, and  reckless  youth.  ]^o  story  in  its  sequel 
reveals  so  clearly  the  dangers  which  camp  about, 
the  freedom-loving,  law-defying,  adventurous,  and 
undisciplined  soul.  For  any  youth,  and  espe- 
cially for  any  youth  of  Germanic  lineage,  to  know 
and  love  and  mourn  for  Siegfried  is  to  be  haunted 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE  109 

by  presentiments  of  all  the  fatalities  which 
threaten  himself. 

If  the  reader  has  divined  that  each  of  the  three 
great  peoples  of  the  Occident  has  foreshadowed  in 
myth  and  illustrated  in  history  a  distinct  aspect 
of  free  personality,  the  question  will  press, 
whether  the  revelation  be  complete.  From  Greece 
we  learn  that  in  free  personality  beauty  attains 
consummate  expression;  from  Rome  that  person- 
ality implies  a  common  and  therefore  transcend- 
ent will;  from  the  Germanic  peoples  that  it  is 
daemonic,  and  unillumined  by  its  own  ideal,  rushes 
madly  to  destruction.  But  what  becomes  of 
beauty  if  its  vanishing  types  point  to  no  arche- 
typal reality?  What  becomes  of  transcendental 
will  if  there  be  no  transcendent  person  in  whom 
it  inheres  ?  And  what  avails  a  passion  for  free- 
dom so  compelling  that  it  joyfully  embraces 
death  if  in  that  mad  embrace  freedom  be  forever 
crushed  and  slain? 

The  spiritual  orient  ends  and  the  spiritual  Oc- 
cident begins,  not  with  Greece,  but  with  that 
wonderful  tribe  which,  wandering  from  the  East, 
halts  for  a  while  in  Chaldea  and'  Egypt  and  settles 
finally  a  consciously  chosen  people  in  a  promised 
land.  Asiajs  the  mother  of  religifiiis.  She 
brought  forth  Brahm  and  trieotostill  the  craving 
of  her  soul  with  his  formless  and  impotent  infini- 
tude.    Descending  into  more  energetic  depths  of 


110  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  spirit  she  rose  therefrom  bringing  Ahura 
Mazda  and  Angra  Mainyu  locked  in  a  deathless 
struggle.  Quickened  by  the  cycles  of  nature  so  cor- 
respondent to  and  interpretive  of  the  cycles  of  the 
intellect,  she  conceived  Osiris,  who  through  death 
achieved  divinity.  But  her  haunting  question 
was  not  adequately  answered,  nor  her  historic 
mission  accomplished  until  with  the  concordant 
voices  of  Hebrew  prophets  and  psalmists  she  pro- 
claimed God  a  Free  Person,  degraded  proud  na- 
ture to  His  handiwork,  glorified  man  as  His 
image,  and  revealed  righteousness  and  loving- 
kindness  as  His  eternal  attributes. 

It  has  been  said  "  that  the  first  man  who  re- 
strained the  native  instantaneous  movements  of 
the  self-preserving,  self-reproducing  instincts  had 
morality  revealed  to  him."  Such  self-restraint 
declares  that  the  ideal  and  permanent  self  has 
victoriously  confronted  the  natural  and  vanish- 
ing self.  Of  all  historic  peoples  the  Hebrew  was 
most  intimately  aware  of  this  antagonism  between 
natural  and  ideal  selfhood  and  most  immediately 
assured  that  the  mandates  of  the  ideal  self  were 
uttered  with  divine  authority  and  would  be  en- 
forced by  divine  compulsion.  "  The  objective 
validity  of  the  moral "  was  the  point  of  departure 
for  the  Hebrew  religion,  and  since  the  inseparable 
correlate  of  morality  is  will,  through  the  logic  of 
conscience,  ascent  was  made  to  the  idea  of  a  per- 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE  111 

sonal  God.  This  great  concept  attained,  the  sub- 
sequent history  of  the  Hebrew  people  records  one 
long  wrestle  with  its  implications,  and  gradually 
the  national  mind  decides  upon  righteousness 
and  loving-kindness  as  the  determining  attributes 
of  Jehovah.  "  The  Lord  God  is  merciful  and 
gracious  "  and  "  Like  as  a  father  He  pitieth  his 
children."  And  yet  this  loving  God  is  also  a  right- 
eous God  and  "  will  by  no  means  clear  the  guilty." 

Great  philosophers  have  made  us  aware  that 
loving-kindness  and  justice  are  necessary  implica- 
tions of  personality.  A  selfish  God  would  refuse 
to  share  His  being.  But  such  a  selfish  God  could 
not  be  personal,  because  personality  demands 
that  the  self  make  itself  objective.  Hence  per- 
sonality presupposes  an  altruistic  God  who  be- 
stows real  and  not  merely  seeming  being  upon 
His  creatures.  Again  true  being  presupposes  free- 
dom, and  the  creature  possessing  it  must  be  held 
responsible  for  his  deeds.  Therefore  God  cannot 
be  loving  unless  He  is  just  and  by  returning  upon 
each  doer  the  moral  equivalent  of  his  deed  recog- 
nizes his  freedom  and  dignity.^ 

Only  those  who  know  how  far  imagination  and 
conscience  outrun  conscious  definition  and  realize 

>  The  argument  advanced  is  borrowed  from  Dr.  Harris  and 
is  to  be  found  in  a  monograph  entitled  Hegel's  Voyage  of 
Discovery,  read  before  the  American  Philosophical  Afisociar 
tion,  December,  1903. 
10 


112  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

that  without  their  antecedent  activity  reason  would 
have  nothing  to  define,  can  appreciate  the  divine 
message  given  through  the  Hebrews  to  all  man- 
kind. Appreciation  deepens  with  recognition  of 
the  fact  that  conscious  definition  too  often  leaves 
the  definer  cold  to  the  practical  demands  of  the 
truth  defined.  The  glory  of  the  Hebrew  people  is 
not  only  that  it  gave  us  the  one  true  God,  but  that 
it  gave  us  a  nation  living  by  faith  in  God.  The 
deliverance  of  Israel  from  Egypt  was  by  His 
might ;  the  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey  was 
His  gift;  national  prosperity  was  from  God's 
hand;  national  adversity  was  His  chastisement; 
national  enemies  were  His  scourging  rods;  na- 
tional captivity  was  the  affliction  with  which 
He  visited  His  people  because  of  the  multitude 
of  their  transgressions,  and  the  undying  na- 
tional hope  was  that  the  redeemed  of  the  Lord 
should  return  and  come  with  singing  unto 
Zion. 

Between  the  chosen  people  and  the  true  God 
there  was  established  a  covenant  of  righteousness. 
Their  pledge  to  Him  was  obedience;  His  pledge 
to  them  blessing  for  themselves  and  through  them 
for  the  whole  world.  Disobedience  was  deser- 
tion to  false  gods  and  destruction  for  the  deserter. 
Never  has  the  objective  validity  of  the  moral  had 
more  signal  recognition.  Never  has  practical  de- 
nial of  the  moral  imperative  been  more  clearly  set 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  113 

forth  as  the  sole  and  sufficient  cause  of  individual 
and  national  disaster. 

The  heroes  of  Hebrew  story  are  many,  but  their 
spirit  is  one,  and  whether  they  subdue  kingdoms, 
stop  the  mouths  of  lions,  quench  the  violence  of 
fire,  or  raise  the  dead  to  life,  their  victory  is  al- 
ways the  triumph  of  a  faith  which  works  right- 
eousness. To  influence  childish  imagination  with 
their  prevailing  deeds  is  to  kindle  in  the  hearts 
of  children  something  akin  to  their  believing, 
loyal,  and  resolute  temper.  It  is  well  to  know 
Achilles,  Curtius,  Siegfried,  but  if  by  the  path- 
way of  the  good,  man  climbs  most  securely  to  that 
eminence  of  spirit  whence  he  discerns  final  truth 
and  perfect  beauty,  it  is  dangerous  not  to  know 
Abraham,  Moses,  David,  Elijah,  Daniel,  and 
the  Hebrew  youths  unharmed  in  the  furnace 
of  fire. 

The  latest  supposed  discovery  in  morals  is,  that 
there  are  none.  The  one  fixed  fact  about  moral- 
ity is  that  it  must  be  fluid.  Nature  ascends  by 
making  creatures  with  more  brains.  Let  us  con- 
spire with  nature  to  create  men  with  more  brains. 
Whatever  contributes  to  this  result  it  is  expedi- 
ent to  do,  and  this  versatile  and  adaptive  expe- 
diency is  the  genial  successor  of  all  despotic  and 
stultifying  moral  imperatives.  With  this  discov- 
ery thought  retreats  from  the  Hebrew  intuition 
that  to  morality  belongs  objective  validity  upon 


114  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

that  contingent  morality  which  even  to-day  is 
characteristic  of  farther  Asia/  and  as  a  logical 
result  abandons  all  lingering  faith  in  an  eternal 
intellect  to  which  human  intellect  corresponds. 
Man  is  the  orphan  of  a  universe  indifferent  to  his 
fate  and  must  either  succumb  to,  defy,  or  outwit 
the  dread  unknown. 

History  is  concrete  psychology,  and  to  follow 
the  historic  evolution  of  an  idea  is  to  discover  its 
psychologic  implications.  Momentous,  therefore, 
is  the  historic  ascent  of  Hebrew  imagination  from 
the  objective  validity  of  the  moral  to  the  vision 
of  a  personal  God,  and  to  divination  of  justice 
and  love  as  His  necessary  attributes.  These  intui- 
tions attained,  mind  is  impelled  by  its  own  dia- 

> "  We  wonder  if  the  worst  idea  of  Asia,  that  morality  has 
no  immutable  basis,  but  is  a  fluctuating  law  dependent  upon 
some  inexplicable  relation  between  the  individual  and  the 
Creator,  or  the  individual  and  the  All,  will  ever  come  over 
here.  The  Indian  holds  that  a  line  of  conduct  may  be  right 
for  one  man,  or  indeed  imperative,  but  wrong  for  another,  or 
indeed  insufferable;  that  a  world-wide  law  is  unthinkable;  and 
that  each  man  will  be  judged  because  of  his  obedience  to  some 
law  exterrml  to  himself  yet  peculiar  to  his  own  personality.  The 
kings'  obligation  to  the  divine  is  not  the  peasants';  the  ordinary 
Brahmin  must  be  monogamous,  while  the  Koolin  Brahmin 
may  have  sixty  wives;  the  trader  may  cheat  where  the  carrier 
must  keep  contract;  the  usual  Hindoo  must  spare  life,  while 
the  Thug  may  take  it  and  yet  remain  sinless.  That  opinion 
subvertsl  the  very  foundations  of  morality  and  conduct." 
(Italics  mine). — Asia  and  Europe,  Meredith  Townsend,  pp. 
142-43. 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  115 

leetic  to  deeper  presuppositions.  To  visit  upon  a 
finite  being  the  complete  return  of  his  deed  would 
be  to  annihilate  him.  Therefore,  justice  cannot 
be  Avholly  just  until  it  mete  the  equivalent  of  deed 
upon  a  perfect  doer.  This  perfect  doer,  moreover, 
is  presupposed  not  only  by  divine  justice,  but  by 
divine  altruism,  for  love  cannot  be  satisfied  with 
giving  until  it  has  given  itself.  Implicit  there- 
fore in  the  concept  of  a  Personal  God,  whose 
necessary  attributes  are  justice  and  love,  is  that 
doctrine  of  the  Logos,  which  holds  that  from  all 
eternity  a  Perfect  Person  must  have  completely 
objectified  Himself  in  a  Second  Person  equal  to 
Himself  but  distinguished  from  Him  by  the  fact 
of  derivation  and  also  that  doctrine  of  creation 
which  discerns  that,  in  thinking  his  derivation,  the 
Logos  calls*  the  world  of  Nature  and  Man  into 
actual  being.  ^ 

We  all  know  how  this  final  implication  of  per- 
sonality was  first  revealed  to  men.  Alike  by  those 
who  accept  and  those  who  reject  it,  its  historic 
source  is  traced  to  the  consciousness  of  Jesus 
Christ  and  its  initial  form  recognized  in  His  im- 
mediate relationship  to  a  God  whom  He  knew  as 
His  father  and  to  men  whom  He  knew  as  His 
brethren.  His  life  and  death  conferred  supernatu- 
ral value  upon  each  individual  of  the  human  race 

'  For  an  explanation  of  these  two  doctrines,  see  Chapter 
XII. 


116  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

because  they  declared  every  man  to  be  a  child  of 
God,  worthy  that  God  should  die  for  him,  and 
called  to  be  perfect  as  his  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect. 

Coiled  within  the  recognition  of  each  man's 
supernatural  value  is  recognition  of  his  ideal  self, 
and  identification  of  this  ideal  self  with  the  ideal 
self  in  all  other  men.  The  man  for  whom  God 
dies  is  mankind.  Mankind  in  men  is  the  ideal 
self  in  men.  Being  one  in  all  men  it  makes  all 
men  one.  Hence  whatever  is  granted  to  one  man 
must  be  claimed  for  all  men,  and  whatever  any 
individual  claims  for  himself,  he  must  spend  his 
life  to  bestow  upon  his  brother. 

The  Christian  intuition  of  ideal  selfhood  ex- 
plains and  by  explaining  heals  that  breach  be- 
tween man  as  he  is  and  man  as  he  ought  to  be, 
whose  pain  was  the  original  point  of  departure 
for  the  Hebrew  religion.  And  as  it  completes 
the  striving  of  one  great  historic  race,  so  it  in- 
itiates the  striving  of  another.  Christian  mission- 
aries carry  to  Germanic  savages  the  message  of 
the  Gospel.  They  tell  men — by  nature  most  as- 
sured of  their  own  supernatural  value  and  heart- 
hungry  for  recognition — of  a  God  who  died  for 
them.  They  stir  in  spirits  eager  for  high  ad- 
venture the  ideal  of  service.  The  rude  warrior 
who  made  good  his  right  to  be  by  slaying  all  who 
dared  contest  it,   surrenders  to   a   self-sacrificing 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE  117 

God,  and  emulating  His  love  is  transformed  into 
a  brave,  courteous,  and  pious  knight  who  spends 
his  life  seeking  to  right  wrong  and  to  succor  the 
oppressed. 

It  was  said  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  chapter 
that  life  copies  literature.  This  is  true,  but  the 
relationship  between  life  and  literature  is  too 
complex  to  be  stated  without  paradox,  and  it  must 
now  be  affirmed  that  literature  transfigures  life. 
Without  Achilles,  Alexander  might  never  have 
been,  but  without  the  unknown  champions  who 
upon  the  borderland  between  Asia  and  Asiatic 
Greece  defended  the  impulses  out  of  which  were 
crystallized  occidental  ideals,  there  had  been  no 
Achilles  and  no  Homer.  So  without  the  self- 
destructive  deeds  of  countless  Teutons  there  had 
been  no  Siegfried  and  no  Gotterdammerung,  and 
without  historic  knighthood  there  had  been  no 
Arthur,  no  Galahad,  and  no  mystic  vision  of  pure 
spiritual  life  embodied  in  legends  of  the  Holy 
Grail.' 

To  see  what  we  should  be  is  to  discover  what 
we  are  and  to  rouse  the  native  self  to  desperate 
struggle.  Becoming  a  Christian,  the  fierce  savage 
who  for  ages  had  made  good  his  being  by  slaugh- 
ter, found  at  last  the  one  foe  he  must  slay,  the  one 
foe  who  might  slay  him.  If  Christianity  gave 
the  Teuton  God  it  also  gave  him  the  devil,  and 
in  the  warfare  it  set  raging  within  his  soul  he 


118  EDUCAtlONAL   ISSUES 

knew  the  devil  often  won  the  victory.  Inordinate 
impulse  was  lashed  to  frenzy  by  ideal  restraints, 
and  in  moments  of  madness  the  whole  of  life 
was  freely  staked  against  immediate  gratification. 
Again,  projecting  racial  madness  into  myth  the 
Germans  created  the  legend  of  Faust.  They  had 
learned  that  there  can  be  no  twilight  of  the  gods, 
but  they  were  intimately  apprised  of  a  final  and 
fatal  twilight  of  the  individual  soul. 

The  legend  of  Faust  and  the  legends  of  chiv- 
alry are  mythical  expressions  of  an  antithesis 
which  history  must  resolve.  Faust  asserts  the  old 
imperative  impulse,  knighthood  recognizes  an  im- 
perative ideal.  The  ancient  instinct,  and  the 
accepted  ideal  seethe  and  whirl  in  the  storm- 
tossed  spirit  of  a  race,  which  had  named  its  soul 
after  the  storm-tossed  sea.^  History  shows  the 
submerging  impulse,  the  ever  more  clearly  emerg- 
ing ideal.  There  shall  be  no  claim  for  one  man 
which  is  not  recognized  as  the  right  of  all  men. 
Germany  gives  the  world  gunpowder  and  thereby 
"  makes  all  men  equally  tall  and  strong."  She 
invents  printing  and  makes  it  possible  for  all  men 

'  See  Max  Miiller's  Science  of  Language,  American  Edition, 
vol.  i,  p.  380.  Also  Grimm's  Dictionary  under  the  word 
Seele,  "In  its  original  form  Saiwalo  .  .  .  earlier  connected 
with  the  word  See  (Saiwig)  ...  by  the  word  Seele  (soul)  the 
Germans  called  to  mind  the  restless  waves  of  the  sea  (lake 
or  ocean)  which  seemed  to  resemble  the  ceaseless  working 
of  their  own  inner  powers,"  etc. 


LITERATURE  AND   LIFE  119 

to  be  wise.  Seizing  upon  Luther  as  her  cham- 
pion she  proclaims  the  right  of  individual  thought. 
(Confronting  with  unflinching  faith  the  negative 
outcome  of  this  daring  deed  in  the  horrors  of  the 
French  Revolution,  she  sings  the  triumphant 
song  which  reverses  the  doom  of  Faust  and  ap- 
peases the  soul-hunger  immanent  in  aboriginal 
impulse  by  setting  the  free  man  on  a  free  soil 
among  a  fr'ee  people.  Last  of  all,  with  sublime 
introspection  she  vindicates  her  racial  instinct  in 
a  philosophy  which  adequately  defines  freedom 
and  reveals  it  as  the  Creator  of  Hebrew  Religion, 
Greek  Art,  and  Roman  Law. 

"Freedom  we  call  it,  for  holier 
Name  of  the  soul  there  is  Aone; 
Surelier  it  labours,  if  slowlier, 
Than  the  metres  of  stars  or  of  sun; 
Slowlier  than  life  into  breath; 
Surelier  than  time  into  death. 
It  moves  till  its  labour  be  done." 

As  Germany  solves  the  theoretic  implications 
of  freedom,  so  the  English-speaking  branch  of  the 
Germanic  race  discovers  the  practical  instrumen- 
talities through  which  freedom  may  be  established 
and  confirmed  among  men.  Discerning  that  free 
men  must  not  only  be  well  governed  but  must 
themselves  become  participant  in  the  governing 
power,    England    invents    local    self-government 


120  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

and  America  creates  a  national  government  of, 
for,  and  by  the  people.  Self-government  de- 
mands intelligence  and  public  schools  spring  into 
being.  The  free  man  must  not  be  pent  in  space 
nor  limited  in  communion ;  hence,  steamships  and 
railways  carry  him  around  the  world  and  bring 
the  world  to  him.  Over  electric  wires  are  flashed 
each  day  the  news  of  the  nations.  Public  libra- 
ries make  the  wisdom  of  the  paat  accessible  and 
empower  each  man  to  live  in  communion  not  only 
with  contemporary  but  with  historic  humanity. 
History  began  when  the  solitary  were  set  in  fam- 
ilies. It  will  attain  the  ideal  it  has  forever  ap- 
proached when  through  the  federation  of  the 
world  it  creates  the  cosmopolitan  individual.^ 

With  justified  pride  Englishmen  remind  the 
world  that  they  have  given  it  Kunnymede,  and 
Shakespeare — the  first  great  charter  of  liberty, 
and  the  imperial  genius  who  saw,  as  poet  had 
never  seen  before,  the  ethical  demands  of  freedom. 
Literature  arose  in  concrete  response  to  the  ob- 
scure search  of  intellect  for  the  conditions  under 
which  men  might  live  together.  To  this  impor- 
tunate question  the  dramas  of  Shakespeare  are 
the  poetic  reply.      They  portray  all  typical  col- 

'  See  in  The  Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  Goethe,  S.  C.  Griggs 
&  Co.,  Chicago,  a  paper  by  Dr.  Wm.  T.  Harris  on  The 
Poetry  and  Philosophy  of  Goethe,  to  which  this  chapter  owes 
many  obligations. 


LITERATURE  AND  LIFE  121 

lisions  between  particular  men  and  the  social 
whole  and  mete  to  each  colliding  individual  the 
exact  equivalent  of  his  deed.  The  arbitrariness 
of  Lear,  the  ambition  of  Macbeth,  the  jealousy  of 
Othello  cleanse  men's  souls  of  these  debasing  pas- 
sions. The  vacillation  of  Hamlet  fires  will  to 
stern  resolve.  The  great  historic  plays  fan  the 
flame  of  freedom  in  the  soul  by  portraying  its 
struggle  to  incarnate  itself  in  a  national  state. 
As  to  Germany  belongs  the  poet  of  the  individ- 
ual, so  to  England  belongs  the  poet  of  society. 
Through  its  supreme  poet  each  of  the  two  great 
branches  of  the  Germanic  race  has  interpreted  to 
itself  and  to  all  men  its  own  master  impulse. 

With  recognition  of  the  federated  union  of  the 
world  and  the  cosmopolitan  individual  as  the  goal 
toward  which  humanity  has  always  struggled,  we 
resolve  the  complex  relationship  existing  between 
literature  and  life.  Literature  transfigures  life 
by  discerning  and  portraying  the  lineaments  of 
generic  or  divine  humanity.  Life  copies  litera- 
ture because  it  approximately  defines  her  own 
ideal.  Incarnating  this  ideal  she  makes  possible 
a  more  accurate  and  more  comprehensive  defini- 
tion. It  has  been  said  that  no  great  general  was 
ever  born  in  a  nation  of  cowards,  and  no  great 
philosopher  in  a  nation  of  fools.  It  may  be  added 
that  no  great  poet  was  ever  bom  in  a  nation  lack- 
ing all  mystic  vision.     The  wave  which  dashes 


122  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

highest  on  the  shore  is  borne  there  by  the  power  of 
the  ocean.  The  supreme  individual  is  the  tri- 
umph of  mankind.  He  vindicates  his  right  to  be 
by  creating  a  humanity  assimilated  to  himself. 

The  world  is  always  repeating  Pilate's  ques- 
tion, What  is  truth?  Philosophy  accepts  and 
interprets  the  answer  of  Jesus,  Truth  and  the 
Ideal  Person  are  one,  and  bestows  as  her  great- 
est largess  insight  into  the  implications  of  person- 
ality. Her  definitions  and  presuppositions  ap- 
pease the  intellect,  but  unallied  with  literature 
they  leave  the  will  languid  and  the  heart  cold. 
The  ideal  person  concretely  presented,  appeals  to 
intellect,  emotion,  and  volition.  With  the  total- 
ity of  his  selfhood  he  invokes  the  totality  of  ours, 
and  responsive  to  his  challenge  we  gaze  with  ad- 
miration, glow  with  love,  and  flame  with  high 
resolve. 

Creating  a  larger  and  more  generous  humanity, 
literature  necessarily  creates  a  nobler  speech.  By 
the  criterion  of  language  man  is  distinguished 
from  the  brute.  It  arises  when  men  begin  to 
live  together  and  its  use  implies  ascent  into  the 
common  mind.  It  is  impossible  until  men  have 
learned  to  think  some  general  concepts,  and  there- 
fore its  advent  celebrates  the  emergence  of  the 
ideal.  While  ideals  are  few  and  indistinct,  lan- 
guage must  be  poor  and  vague.  Until  society  has 
created    individuals   capable   of  original   feeling. 


LITERATURE   AND   LIFE  123 

thought,  and  action,  it  must  gyrate  in  a  tedious 
round  of  conventional  words  and  phrases.  Noth- 
ing but  distinction  of  mind  can  create  distinction 
of  speech.  The  men  and  women  of  great  litera- 
ture are  cast  in  larger  molds  than  their  actual  pro- 
totypes, and  use  a  nobler  language.  Their  speech 
grasps  each  idea  in  an  accurate  and  lucid  defi- 
nition. Challenged  to  do  heroic  deeds  their  an- 
swering words  echo  the  clang  of  steel.  Their 
phrases  sparkle  with  fine  allusion  and  glow  with 
illuminating  images.  Their  sentences  move  with 
stately  grace  to  musical  measure.  Being  great 
they  express  greatness.  When  in  the  actual  world 
intelligence  has  become  transparent,  will  heroic, 
sensibility  delicate,  and  life  harmonious,  living 
men  shall  speak  even  as  they. 

The  debt  of  man  to  literature  is  great  So  is 
the  debt  of  man  to  history.  But  to  neither  nor 
both  does  man  owe  everything.  Existent  human- 
ity is  often  explained  as  a  kind  of  self -creation  out 
of  nothing.  It  is  well  to  remind  ourselves  that  to 
make  something  out  of  nothing  is  impossible  even 
to  omnipotence.  God  Himself  only  makes  to  be 
that  which  has  always  been,  and  the  broad  crea- 
tion, proceeding  ever  afresh  from  His  thought  and 
love,  is  the  ceaseless  reaffirmation  of  His  eternal 
and  all-inclusive  deed.  Man  can  make  himself 
actually  only  what  from  the  beginning  he  is  po- 
tentially,   and  his   self-realization   is   progressive 


124  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

v 
self-definition.  Being  a  personal  energy  he  cre- 
ates himself  in  and  through  communion  with 
persons.  History  records  the  stages  of  man's  self- 
realization  in  ever  enlarging  communities.  Liter- 
ature portrays  the  stages  of  man's  self-discovery 
and  points  forward  to  the  greater  communities 
through  which  he  shall  explore  himself  more 
completely,  and  climb  higher  above  himself.  Both 
history  and  literature  reach  toward  a  consumma- 
tion which  is  unattainable  on  earth  and  in  time. 
The  deed  which  earth  demands  of  man  is  ascent 
into  the  human  species.  The  exciting  experience 
to  which  eternity  and  infinity  invite  him  is  ascent 
into  the  divine  genus.  When  through  communion 
with  all  souls  throughout  the  cosmos  each  soul  per- 
fects itself,  the  prophecy  of  literature  will  be  ful- 
filled and  the  purpose  of  history  accomplished. 


CHAPTER    V 


HEEBAET    AND    FEOEBEL 


In  discussing  the  concentric  programme  and 
the  methodical  treatment  of  literature,  I  have 
dealt  with  that  form  of  Herbartianism  which  in- 
vaded the  kindergarten.  It  has  been  far  from 
my  intention  to  imply  that  were  Herbart  alive 
he  would  sympathize  with  the  educational  prac- 
tice of  his  more  radical  disciples.  Professor  Stoy, 
leader  of  the  conservative  Herbartians,  expressed 
the  conviction  that  "  Ziller's  novelties  were  harm- 
ful exaggerations."  ^  The  educators  who  created 
a  practical  plan  of  work  out  of  these  exaggera- 
tions would  seem  to  have  accepted  with  a  too  un-  •  ^^ 
questioning  assurance  the  three  main  tracts  of 
Herbart,  that  the  final  aim  of  education  is  moral- 
ity; its  immediate  aim  many-sided  interest;  and 
the  means  of  arousing  this  desired  interest,  the 
presentation  of  thought-masses.  With  minds  in- 
tent upon  this  aim  and  method  their  attention 
directs  itself  to  creating  "  connected  unities  of 
subject  matter,"  and  apparently  they  remain  se- 

>  Herbart  and  the  Herbartians,  De  Garmo,  p.  185. 
125 


126  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

renely  unaware  that  a  constraining  thought-mass 
can  never  be  imposed  by  one  mind  upon  another, 
but  must  somehow  be  compacted  by  each  mind  for 
itself. 

Had  the  originators  of  concentric  instruction 
given  their  careful  attention  to  Herbart's  discrim- 
ination between  primordial  and  derived  presenta- 
tions, they  might  have  avoided  some  of  their  more 
glaring  mistakes  in  the  education  of  little  chil- 
dren. According  to  Herbart's  psychology  the 
only  original  power  of  the  soul  is  "  that  of  enter- 
ing through  the  medium  of  the  nervous  system 
into  reciprocal  relations  with  the  external  world. 
These  relations  supply  the  mind  with  its  primor- 
dial presentations — the  sensuous  ones  of  sight, 
hearing,  smell,  taste,  touch,  pleasure,  pain."  * 
The  interaction  of  these  primordial  presentations 
produces  the  derived  presentations  which  in  their 
varied  developments  form  the  greater  part  of  the 
mind's  contents.^  It  follo\vs  that  the  building  of 
thought-masses  must  begin  by  laying  a  strong 
foundation  of  primordial  presentations,  and  this 
is  precisely  what  Herbart  himself  attempted  to  do. 
The  duty  of  instruction  as  he  conceived  it  was 
"  to  guide  from  below  upward  two  series,  sepa- 
rate yet  ever  simultaneously  progressing  toward 

*  Science  of  Education,  Felkin's  translation.  Introduction 
by  translators,  p.  33. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  34,  sentence  slightly  transposed. 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL       127 

the  highest  immovable  point."  ^  These  series  he 
distinguished  by  the  names  cognition  and  sym- 
pathy. The  series  of  cognition  was  to  begin  with 
exercises  for  sharpening  sense-perception;  the 
series  of  sympathy  with  stories  presenting  con- 
crete types  of  action  and  character.  The  appeal 
of  the  former  series  was  to  the  child's  several  ex- 
ternal senses,  and  its  object  was  to  create  an  ap- 
perceptive mass  whose  reaction  upon  a  progressive 
experience  would  tend  toward  a  correct  interpre- 
tation of  nature;  the  appeal  of  the  latter  series 
was  to  his  taste  or  immediate  likes  and  dislikes, 
and  its  object  was  to  build  up  a  sound  moral  ap- 
perceptive mass  out  of  numerous  simple  aesthetic 
judgments  of  repugnance  and  agreement.^ 

Herbart  was  familiar  with  the  experiments  of 
Pestalozzi,  and  through  his  doctrine  of  appercep- 
tion, which  insists  upon  the  necessity  of  assimilat- 
ing new  perceptions  by  the  total  amount  of  pre- 
vious experience,  he  added  an  indispensable 
supplement  to  the  theories  of  the  Swiss  reformer. 
With  the  idea  of  apperception  active  in  his  own 
mind    he    was    necessarily    dissatisfied    with    the 

«  Herbart's  A.  B.  C.  of  Sense  Perception.  Eckoff  Int.  Ed. 
Series.  The  reader  will  perceive  that  the  passage  cited  is  one 
of  Herbart's  many  statements  that  instruction  should  be 
divided  into  two  main  lines,  the  one  for  understanding,  the 
other  for  feeling  and  imagination.  See  Chapter  I  of  this 
book. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  89. 
U 


128  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

alphabet  of  sense-perception  offered  by  Pestalozzi. 
Like  Froebel,  he  perceived  that  there  might  be 
not  one  but  many  alphabets  of  externality,  e.g., 
alphabets  of  tastes  and  odors,  of  the  muscular 
sense,  of  color  and  musical  tones,  and  of  the 
mathematical  elements,  form,  number,  and  size. 
Like  Froebel,  again,  he  perceived  that  the  most  im- 
portant alphabet  of  external  sense-perception  was 
that  which  would  enable  children  to  begin  spell- 
ing out  the  truths  of  mathematics.  For  without 
mathematics  "  the  objective  data  of  experience 
cannot  be  correctly  apperceived,"  nor  can  that 
causal  interest  be  satisfied  which  "  impels  search 
for  the  laws  binding  these  data  together."  ^  Cog- 
nizant of  these  truths  Herbart  provided  a  system 
of  instruction  which  "  analyzes  all  forms  into 
triangles,  and  discovers  the  ratios  of  the  sides  of 

>  "Sense-perception  on  the  part  of  the  student  supplies, 
of  course,  the  first  elements  of  knowledge.  But  equally  of 
course  the  educator  who  in  the  Baconian  phrase  should  be 
the  minister  and  interpreter  of  nature  will  arrange  the  sense- 
perceptions  of  the  child,  in,  for  example,  object  lessons  exactly 
as  he  will  any  other  work — namely,  according  to  his  view  of 
the  general  purpose  of  instruction.  The  question  then  is  what 
is  the  view  that  he  should  take?  In  the  first  place  it  will  be 
conceded  that  the  object  of  learning  is  doing  and  that  before 
we  can  act  properly,  we  must  have  properly  learned.  This 
we  cannot  do  except  by  attention,  by  devotion  to  the  object 
in  hand.  It  all  comes  to  the  accurate  apperception  of  the  ob- 
jective data.  In  the  second  place  the  child  seeks  for  the  laws  that 
bind  these  data  together.  These  laws  may  be  at  first  of  ex- 
tremely crude  empiricalness;  the  child  may  not  even  know  the 


HERB ART   AND   FROEBEL  129 

the  triangles  one  to  another  as  depending  upon 
the  size  of  the  angles."  ^  This  mathematical  al- 
phabet, it  is  evident,  will  enable  pupils  to  classify 
the  infinitude  of  forms  in  nature  under  a  finite 
number  of  geometric  archetypes ;  will  reduce  these 
archetypes  to  unity  by  analyzing  them  into  a 
single  form ;  will  explain  the  varieties  of  this 
form  itself  by  showing  that  the  ratio  of  its  sides 
one  to  another  is  dependent  upon  the  size  of  the 
angles;  and  finally,  will  direct  attention  away 
from  all  forms  to  formative  processes  and  thus 
abet  the  child  in  that  search  for  causal  energy 
which  is  the  final  source  of  his  interest  in  the 
inanimate  objects  of  his  environment.  What 
he  really  wants  to  know  is  not  an  object  but 
an  object-making  energy.  Himself  a  causative 
power  he  can  appease  his  intellect  only  with 
causes. 

As  Herbart  perceived  that  mathematics  offer 
the  best  point  of  departure  for  the  comprehension 
of  nature,  so  he  recognized  in  good  stories  well 
told  the  best  point  of  departure  for  all  studies  re- 
term  laws,  but  that  is  what  it  seeks.  But  the  data  as  well  as 
the  laws  are  manifested  in  time  and  space;  in  other  words  in 
mathematics.  .  .  .  Mathematics,  then,  is  the  mental  basis  for 
apperceiving  both  data  and  laws."  (Italics  are  mine.) — 
Herbart' s  A.  B.  C.  of  Sense-Perception,  p.  82.  Chapter  con- 
tributed by  Professor  Eckoff. 

'  Herbart's  A.  B.  C.  of  Sense-Perception,  EJditor's  Preface, 
p.  viii. 


130  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

lating  to  the  comprehension  of  man.  His  sugges- 
tions with  regard  to  the  selection  of  stories  are 
admirable.  They  must  not  celebrate  the  exploits 
of  children,  "  for  the  whole  look  of  a  well-trained 
boy  is  directed  above  himself."  ^  They  must  pre- 
sent such  men  as  he  himself  would  like  to  be."  ^ 
"  They  must  show  the  bad  plainly,  but  not  as  an 
object  of  desire."  ^  "  If  the  effect  of  a  story  is 
to  be  lasting  and  emphatic  it  must  carry  on  its 
face  the  strongest  and  clearest  stamp  of  human 
greatness."  ^  To  these  valuable  suggestions,  and 
many  others  of  similar  purport,  may  be  traced  the 
inspiration  of  that  one  great  meritorious  deed  of 
Herbart's  more  radical  disciples — their  insistence 
upon  the  educational  value  of  fairy  tales,  racial 
myths,  and  periods  of  history  important  to  the 
development  of  the  race  "  so  far  as  a  poet  or 
historian  has  described  them  in  a  classical  man- 
ner." ^ 

In  his  distinction  of  a  series  of  studies  for  cog- 
nition, and  a  series  for  sympathy,  Herbart  simply 
reaffirmed    the   traditional    practice    of    pedagogy 

'  Science  of  Education,  Felkin's  translation,  p.  89. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  89.  8  Ibid.,  p.  88.  » Ibid.,  p.  89. 

» Ziller,  cited  in  Ufer's  Pedagogy  of  Herbert,  p.  73.  Her- 
bart's own  series  for  sympathy  is  summed  up  as  follows  by 
Professor  Eckoff:  "The  Homeric  poems  for  childhood,  his- 
toric writers  for  the  growing  boy,  modern  history  for  the 
youth  approaching  maturity,  Platonic  exclusiveness  of 
aught  however  artistic,  that  might  injure  the  moral  picture 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL  131 

with  its  recognition  of  science  and  the  humanities 
as  the  objective  and  subjective  strands  of  educa- 
tion. In  his  discussions  of  these  two  series  there 
is  evident  a  deep  insight  into  educational  values. 
In  endeavoring  to  provide  for  each  series  a  foun- 
dation of  primordial  presentations  he  did  original 
work,  and  to  his  honor  be  it  remembered  that  he 
recognized  in  literature  the  most  nearly  accessible 
and  best  path  of  approach  to  all  humane  studies; 
that  he  discouraged  desultory  object  lessons;  dis- 
cerned that  the  data  of  sense  must  be  not  only 
perceived  but  apperceived,  and  insisted  upon 
mathematics  as  the  true  point  of  departure  for 
the  interpretation  of  nature. 

Herbart's  alphabets  of  cognition  and  sympathy 
were  designed  for  the  use  of  children  who  had 
attained  school  age.  The  wn^gf  ^Ipfa^f,  ^f  Vi^n  pTnn 
is  its  exclusive  emphasis  upon  assimilative  activ- 
ity, and  its  failure  to  provide  any  response  to  that 
demand  for  self-expression  which  is  the  most 
marked  characteristic  of  ^]p'1rlVinnfl  This  defect 
becomes  still  more  apparent  in  the  following  sug- 

of  the  world  which  is  to  be  unrolled  step  by  step  like  the 
natural  picture — such  is  Herbart's  plan  put  into  one  sentence 
and  crumpled  somewhat  in  the  packing.  .  .  .  Homer  occupies 
the  same  position  as  the  initial  point  in  the  education  of  the 
sympathetic  nature  that  the  A.  B.  C.  of  Sense-perception, 
whose  mathematical  nature  will  become  perfectly  plain  as  the 
reader  studies  it,  occupies  as  the  initial  point  in  the  cognitive 
education." — Herbart's  A.  B.  C.  of  Sense- Perception,  p.  85. 


132  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

gestions  with  regard  to  the  education  of  younger 
children : 

I  have  suggested  marking  out  with  bright  nails 
on  a  board  the  typical  triangles  and  placing  them  con- 
tinuously within  sight  of  the  child  in  its  cradle.  I 
was  laughed  at.  Well,  people  may  laugh  at  me  still 
more.  For  I,  in  thought,  place  near  that  board  sticks 
and  balls  painted  with  various  colors.  I  constantly 
change,  combine,  and  vary  these  sticks,  and  later  on 
plants  and  the  child's  playthings  of  every  kind.  I 
take  a  little  organ  into  the  nursery  and  sound  simple 
tones  and  intervals  on  it  for  a  minute  at  a  time.  I 
add  a  pendulum  to  it  for  the  child's  eye  and  for  the 
unpraeticed  player's  hand  that  its  rhythmic  propor- 
tions may  be  observed.  I  would  further  exercise  the 
child's  sense  to  distinguish  cold  and  heat  by  the  ther- 
mometer, and  to  estimate  the  degrees  of  heaviness  by 
weights.  Finally,  I  would  send  him  to  school  with 
the  cloth  manufacturer  to  learn  as  correctly  as  he,  to 
distinguish  finer  and  coarser  wool  by  touch.  Yes,  who 
knows  whether  I  would  not  adorn  the  walls  of  the 
nursery  with  very  large  gayly  painted  letters.  At  the 
foundation  of  all  this  lies  the  simple  thought  that  the 
abrupt  and  troublesome  process  of  stamping  things 
on  the  mind,  called  learning  by  heart,  will  be  either 
not  necessary,  or  very  easy  if  only  the  elements  of  syn- 
thesis are  early  made  constituent  parts  of  the  child's 
early  experience.' 

"  What  will  I  be  doing  while  you  are  knocking 
me  down  ?  "  inquired  a  plucky  youngster  of  the 

»  Science  of  Education,  Felkin's  translation,  pp.  158-59. 


HERBART   AND   FROEBEL  133 

older  comrade  who  had  threatened  to  lay  him  on 
the  ground.  I  cannot  read  Herbart's  suggestions 
with  regard  to  the  education  of  infancy  without 
an  irresistible  impulse  to  paraphrase  this  query 
and  ask.  What  will  the  child  be  doing  while  Her- 
bart  is  building  him  up?  Herbart's  procedure  is 
to  be  preferred  to  that  of  his  more  radical  disci- 
^^les  because  at  least  it  avails  itself  of  primordial 
presentations.  Like  theirs,  however,  it  is  a  false 
procedure,  because  it  conceives  the  educator  as  a 
builder,  and  the  intellect  and  character  of  the 
pupil  as  something  he  may  build.  Furthermore, 
it  conceives  intellect  as  prior  to  and  creative  of 
feeling  and  will.  Therefore :  "  Go  to ;  let  us  build 
thought-masses  in  the  child  and  they  will  build 
him." 

The  study   of  Herbart's    pedagogics   has   been 

fruitful  of  good  results,  because  it  has  directed 

attention  to  the  process  by  which  new  experience 

is  assimilated  with  previous  knowledge,  and  old 

ideas  reconstructed  through  new  experience.     The 

\    word  apperception,  which  designates  this  assimi- 

j/lating  and  reconstructing  process,   stands  for  the 

(^  most  characteristic  feature  of  the  art  of  education 

j  as  understood  by  Herbart,  and  suggests  also  his 

/  most  important  contribution  to  the  science  of  edu- 

Vjeation.     When,  however,  we  study  his  explanation 

of  this  process  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  it  has 

many  serious   defects.      The  more   important   of 


/; 


134  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

these  defects  are  that  he  emphatically  denies  the 
spontaneous  activity  and  structural  form  of  the 
mind  and  thereby  loses  two  apperceiving  agencies 
of  the  highest  value,  and  that  he  ignores  the  now 
generally  admitted  fact  that  no  strong  appercep- 
tion takes  place  without  the  conspiring  influences 
of  feeling  and  volition.  It  is  his  merit  to  have 
called  widespread  attention  to  an  important  proc- 
ess and  to  have  aroused  critical  discussions  as  to 
its  nature.  It  cannot  be  denied  that  his  own  de- 
scription of  the  process  is  very  inadequate. 

Not  only  is  Herbart's  pedagogy  rooted  in  an 
inadequate  conception  of  the  apperceiving  process, 
but  it  is  self -contradictory  in  its  insistence  upon 
many-sided  interest  as  both  the  result  of  thought- 
masses  and  the  agency  through  which  they  are 
created.  Without  interest,  no  circle  of  thought, 
and  yet,  without  the  circle  of  thought,  no  interest, 
for  in  it  alone  resides  "  the  initiative  life,  the 
primal  energy."  A  debt  of  gratitude  is  due  to 
Herbart  for  his  recognition  of  the  significance  of 
interest  or  involuntary  attention,  but  educators 
are  now  rapidly  coming  to  see  that  for  wise  meth- 
ods of  arousing  and  guiding  interest  they  must 
turn  to  Froebel. 

The  pedagogy  of  Herbart  is  intimately  con- 
nected with  a  pluralistic  ontology  and  a  mechan- 
ical psychology.  He  conceives  ultimate  reality 
as  a  plenum  of  independent  monads,  yet  for  some 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL       135 

reason,  perhaps  because  of  the  exigency  of  explan- 
ation,* perhaps  because  his  own  mind  was  con- 
trolled by  an  apperceptive  mass  in  which  the  idea 
of  relativity  was  dominant,  he  admits  some  com- 
munion between  these  mutually  excluding  reals. 
In  accord  with  his  ontology  and  his  apperception 
mass  "  his  psychology  is  of  the  association  type."  ^ 
The  soul  is  a  psychic  monad  devoid  of  all  capa- 
city, except  that  of  self-defense  against  the  attacks 
of  other  monads.  "  Its  deed  of  self-defense  pro- 
duces presentations,"  and  with  their  production 
its  activity  ceases  forever,  and  everything  that 
afterwards  goes  on  within  it  is  due  to  the  energy 
of  its  "  naturalized  assailants."  ^  "  The  self  is  a 
result  of  the  union  and  interpenetration  of  pre- 
sentations. In  their  totality  these  presentations 
form  the  intellect.  The  furtherance  or  suppres- 
sion of  one  presentation  by  another  gives  rise  to 

'  "  Herbart's  method  is  to  make  any  assumption  whatever 
that  will  bring  harmony  and  consistency  into  our  thinking 
without  regard  to  the  expUcabiUty  of  the  assumptions  them- 
selves."— Herbart  and  the  Herbartians,  p.  27. 

« The  Ekiucational  Theories  of  Herbart  and  Froebel,  John 
Angus  MacVannel,  p.  62. 

»  "The  soul  at  first  is  merely  blank  formal  unity  of  which 
nothing  can  be  said  excepting  that  it  can  act  in  self-defence; 
the  soul  shows  its  character  by  what  it  does  in  the  struggle  for 
existence.  Its  peculiar  mode  of  self-defence  is  a  sensation 
or  presentation.  It  admits  presentations  to  its  domain. 
Admission  proves  to  be  occupation.  Its  former  assailants  are 
so  to  speak  naturalized  as  ideas." — Ibid.,  p.  62. 


136  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

feeling  in  its  two  forms  of  pleasure  and  pain. 
The  successful  struggle  of  a  presentation  against 
others  that  tend  to  suppress  it  is  desire,"  ^  and 
"  Will  is  desire  combined  with  the  supposition 
that  it  can  be  fulfilled."  ^  In  short,  at  Lotze  puts 
it,  "Everything  further  that  happens  in  it,  the  for- 
mation of  its  conceptions,  the  development  of  the 
various  faculties,  the  settlement  of  the  principles 
on  which  it  acts  are  all  mechanical  results  which, 
when  once  these  primary  self-preservations  have 
been  aroused,  follow  from  their  own  reactions; 
and  the  soul,  the  arena  on  which  all  this  takes 
place,  never  shows  itself  volcanic  and  irritable 
enough  to  interfere  by  new  reactions  with  the  play 
of  its  states,  and  to  give  them  such  new  directions 
as  do  not  follow  analytically  from  them  accord- 
ing to  the  universal  laws  of  their  reciprocal  ac- 
tions." 3 

Several  insistent  questions  torment  the  reflec- 
tive mind  as  it  ponders  Herbart's  bntologic  and 
psychologic  assumptions.  If  the  soul  can  natural- 
ize attacking  monads  as  presentations,  must  there 
not  be  between  it  and  them  some  degree  of  par- 
ticipation, and  does  not  participation  in  any  de- 
gree imply  a  transcendent  including  unity?     If 

>  Herbart's  Doctrine  of  Interest,  Wm.  T.  Harris. 
» Text  Book  of  Psychology,  Herbart,  p.  82.     In.  Ed.  Series. 
'  Lotze,  cited  in  The  Educational  Theories  of  Herbart  and 
Froebel,  by  John  Angus  MacVannel,  p.  70.     (Italics  mine.) 


Ht:RBART  AND  FROEBEL  137 

the  soul  is  devoid  of  activity,  where  does  it  get 
energy  to  defend  itself  against  its  assailants  ?  If 
it  has  even  a  minimum  of  energy  to  start  with, 
why  does  it  lose  it  after  its  one  great  act  of  self- 
defense  ?  And  finally,  if  the  self  is  a  product  of 
free  and  independent  ideas  which,  for  some  in- 
explicable reason,  have  a  continuous  tendency  to 
assimilate,  why  assume  a  soul  substance  as  the 
arena  of  their  wars,  treaties,  and  alliances  ?  ^ 

The  most  characteristic  feature  alike  of  Her- 
hart's  ontology,  his  psychology,  and  his  peda- 
gogy is  an  almost  exclusive  emphasis  upon  assimi- 
lative processes.  There  would  seem  to  be  a  close 
connection  between  this  emphasis  and  his  own 
experience.  He  knew  nothing  in  life  but  learn- 
ing and  teaching.  We  read  that  as  a  child  he 
showed  extraordinary  power  of  understanding 
and  remembering  the  thoughts  of  others."  ^  He 
himself  tells  us  that  ''  Filling  the  mind,  this  it  is 
which  before  all  other  more  detailed  purposesf 
ought  to  be  the  general  result  of  instruction."  ^ ' 
Out  of  the  assimilated  knowledge  of  the  past  will 
spring  that  sympathy  with  and  conformity  to  con- 
ventional standards  of  action  which  is  apparently 

»  See  The  Educational  Theories  of  Herbart  and  Froebel, 
John  Angus  MacVannel,  pp.  62,  63;  69,  70. 

2  Science  of  Education,  Felkin.  Introduction  by  the 
translators,  p.  2. 

» Ibid.,  p.  192. 


138  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

what  Herbart  understands  by  morality.  Emer- 
son reminds  us  how  necessary  it  is  to  discriminate 
between  the  thinker  and  man  thinking.  No  less 
important  is  it  to  discriminate  between  the  teacher 
and  man  teaching.  Herbart  was  thinker  and 
teacher,  not  man  thinking  and  teaching.  Hence 
the  challenge  of  world-transforming  events  failed 
to  provoke  in  him  any  adequate  response,  and  he 
lived  through  one  of  the  most  sublime  periods  of 
history  not  only  without  comprehension  of  its 
meaning  but  without  that  thrill  of  excitement 
and  joy  which  in  all  susceptible  souls  prophesies 
the  birth  of  a  new  era. 

Never  surely  has  there  lived  a  man  less  respon- 
sive than  Herbart  to  the  spirit  of  his  age.  It 
was  an  age  which,  by  smiting  men's  eyes  with  that 
greatest  of  all  object  lessons,  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, wakened  them  to  knowledge  of  the  fact  that 
mind  had  attained  its  majority  and  that  hence- 
forth neither  could  intellect  be  appeased  with 
tradition,  nor  will  with  convention.  Great  heroes 
of  contemplation  were  wrestling  with  the  problems 
implicit  in  this  revolution  of  the  popular  con- 
sciousness and  were  solving  them  by  creating 
a  philosophy  which  sanctifies  historic  achieve- 
ment as  a  cumulative  revelation  of  the  divine 
principle  in  man,  and  blazes  a  path  of  historic 
progress  by  demonstrating  the  necessity  of  insti- 
tutions for  the  realization  of  freedom.     Stung  to 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL       139 

high  resolve  by  the  defeat  of  Jena  and  the  Treaty 
of  Tilsit,  Germany  was  rising  as  one  man  to 
throw  off  a  hateful  yoke,  and  in  repelling  the  in- 
vader from  her  soil  was  accomplishing  that  first 
great  deed  of  national  self-making,  whose  consum- 
mation has  been  the  imperial  union  of  all  German 
states.  With  lightning  flash  of  thought  and 
voice  of  thunder,  Fichte  was  making  his  country- 
men aware  that  "  Will  is  the  efficient  living  prin- 
ciple of  the  world  of  reason,  as  motion  is  the 
efficient  living  principle  of  the  world  of  sense." 
Goethe  was  startling  Germany  to  far  surmises  by 
painting  its  portrait  as  a  melancholy  and  inef- 
fective youth  wandering  in  aimless  dreams  be- 
tween the  natural  and  supernatural  worlds,  and, 
retranslating  the  heart  of  the  New  Testament, 
was  writing  with  the  pen  of  Faust  "  In  the  be- 
ginning was  the  act."  And  in  the  midst  of  all 
the  mighty  stir  and  tumult  of  a  revolution  which 
in  every  sphere  was  dethroning  abstract  intel- 
lect and  enthroning  concrete  deed,  Herbart  was 
sitting  peacefully  in  his  study  or  among  his  pupils 
building  up  thought-masses  out  of  primordial  pre- 
sentations, and  shaping  standard  character  out  of 
assimilated  ideas! 

In  striking  contrast  to  Herbart's  detachment 
from  the  life  of  the  world  was  Froebel's  enthu- 
siastic response  to  the  revolution  taking  place  in 
popular  feeling  and  striving  to  define  itself  in 


140  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

philosophy.  The  impulse  of  his  age  surged  in 
him  when  as  a  mere  youth  he  wrote  in  the  jour- 
nal of  a  philanthropic  friend,  "  You  work  to  give 

y'lnen  bread;  be  it  the  effort  of  my  life  to  give 
men  themselves."  The  ideal  of  his  age  had  clari- 
fied itself  in  his  mind  when  he  defined  the  final 
aim  of  education,  not  as  morality,  but  as  free- 
dom. The  method  of  education  implicit  in  this 
aim  had  revealed  itself  to  him  when  in  1828  he 
wrote  to  Krause :  "  In  doing  must  all  true  edu- 
cation begin ;  in  the  deed  must  it  be  rooted ;  from 
the  deed  must  it  grow ;  out  of  the  living,  creative, 
self-observant  and  self-penetrating  deed  must  it 
develop."  ^  The  remainder  of  his  life  was  devoted 
to  working  out  in  practice  the  demands  of  this 
aim  and  method.  An  education  whose  method  is 
to  be  rooted  in  creative  and  therefore  free  activity 
must  necessarily  begin  with  the  beginning  of  life. 
Hence  Froebel  who  had  commenced  his  profes- 
sional career  as  a  teacher  of  boys  ends  it  as  the 
founder  of  the  kindergarten  and  the  author  of  the 
Mother-Play. 

The    two    insights    which    enabled   Froebel    to 
create   the    kindergarten,    were    insight   into    the 

»^  ideal  values  of  human  life  as  concrete  expressions 
of  the  substance  of  freedom,  and  insight  into  play 
as  that  activity  of  childhood  which  achieves  most 
perfectly  the  form  of  freedom.     Play  has  a  per- 

» Aus  Froebel's  Leben,  p.  141. 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL       141 

sistent  form  and  a  manifold  content.  Froebel 
borrowed  its  form  and  selected  from  its  content. 
He  wished  to  preserve  the  spontaneity  which  dis- 
tinguishes play  from  work.  He  wished  to  abet  the 
struggle  of  the  soul  toward  concrete  freedom  by 
selecting  from  among  the  native  plays  of  child- 
hood those  which  are  related  to  the  ideal  values  of 
human  life. 

The  antithesis  between  work  and  play  has  been 
often  defined,  but  seems  to  be  ever  and  anon  prac- 
tically ignored.  Work  is  something  done  for  a 
^  purpose.  Play  is  something  done  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  doing  it.  Without  work,  in  which  he 
holds  himself  to  his  set  purpose,  man  would  never 
learn  to  subordinate  his  whims  and  caprices. 
Without  play,  in  which  free  rein  is  given  to  his 
own  initiative,  he  could  never  develop  individual- 
ity. Even  in  adult  life  alternations  of  work  and 
play  are  necessary  to  physical  health,  mental  san- 
ity, and  moral  poise.  In  infancy  and  early  child- 
hood, or,  to  be  specific,  until  the  child  is  three  and 
a  half  or  four  years  old  individuality  is  so  feeble 
that  without  constant  free  and  undirected  play 
it  would  languish  and  die.  The  infant  must 
spend  much  time  doing  just  as  he  pleases,  in  or- 
der that  he  may  ever  please  to  be  something  or 
somebody  in  particular.  At  the  age  of  three  or 
four  years,  however,  he  enters  a  transition  state 
which  ordinarily  lasts  until  the  age  of  six.     If 


142  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

throughout  this  period  of  transition  he  does  noth- 
ing but  exercise  his  powers  according  to  his  mo- 
mentary whim  he  becomes  so  capricious  and  self- 
willed  that  later  it  is  difficult  to  waken  in  him 
any  sense  of  participation  in  a  social  whole,  or 
any  reverence  for  the  larger  human  experience. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  forced  to  work  dur- 
ing this  fluid  period,  individuality  is  enfeebled 
and  originality  sapped.  He  needs  a  method  of 
education  which,  preserving  intact  the  form  of 
freedom,  shall  fill  this  form  with  the  substance 
of  freedom.  To  provide  this  mediatorial  edu- 
cation is  the  specific  function  of  the  kinder- 
garten. 

It  is  said  that  some  years  ago  the  roots  of  grape- 
vines in  the  wine-producing  regions  of  Europe 
had  become  so  weak  through  overcultivation  that 
they  lost  all  power  of  resisting  the  attacks  of  cer- 
tain parasites.^  Strength  was  renewed  by  grafting 
the  highly  developed  vine  upon  the  stock  of  the 
American  "  Concord "  grape,  a  variety  recently, 
developed  from  the  wild  grape.  The  success  of 
the  experiment  was  due  to  the  fact  that  there  was 
identity  of  species  between  the  scion  and  the  graft. 
Grapevines  could  not  have  been  successfully 
grafted  upon  oaks,  but  highly  developed  vines 
could  be  grafted  upon  their  own  ancestral  stock. 

'  The  Philoxera  vastatrix  appeared  in  1863  and  soon  after 
spread  to  all  the  grape-bearing  countries  of  Europe. 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL       143 

In  like  manner  the  kindergarten  seeks  the  renewal 
and  development  of  physical,  mental,  and  moral 
strength  by  grafting  upon  the  native  manifesta- 
tions of  childhood  as  expressed  in  play,  the  higher 
realization  of  their  own  implicit  ideal. 

Through  his  study  of  the  different  forms  of 
childish  play  Froebel  became  aware  of  the  fact 
that  some  of  them  point  toward  the  practical  arts, 
^  some  toward  the  fine  arts,  some  toward  science 
and  literature,  and  some  toward  the  ethical  life 
of  man  as  incarnated  in  social  institutions.  In 
these  creations  of  the  human  spirit  Froebel  found 
his  standards  of  value.  In  different  native  forms 
of  play  he  recognized  the  germinal  tendencies  of 
which  these  values  are  the  higher  expression.  To 
guide  the  spontaneous  energies  of  play  over  those 
paths  which  lead  most  directly  toward  the  sum- 
mits of  ideal  achievement  was  his  confessed  aim. 
His  aspiration  was  to  help  children  to  do  better 
what  they  themselves  were  trying  to  do,  and  be- 
cause his  instrumentalities  and  methods  conspire 
to  produce  this  result  his  disciples  claim  that  he 
has  transformed .  play  into  education.^ 

Whoso  understands  the  general  purpose  and 
method  of  the  kindergarten  will  also  understand 

•  In  Chapter  II  of  this  book  I  have  attempted  to  give  a 
general  outline  of  Froebel's  plan.     Kindergartners  are  asked 
to  re-read  that  chapter  in  connection  with  the  definition  of 
Froebel's  purpose  given  in  the  present  chapter. 
13 


144  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

the  complete  accord  of  Froebel's  spirit  with  the 
spirit  of  his  age.    As  has  been  said,  it  was  an  age 

^n  which,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  man  became 
intimately  aware  of  his  own  freedom.  Its  primal 
deed  was  the  Emancipation  Proclamation  of 
Mind  declaring  that  thereafter  neither  intellect 
nor  will  should  bow  to  any  external  authority. 
Its  second  great  deed  was  the  transubstantiation 
of  authority  into  freedom  by  the  discovery  of  its 
inborn  rationality.  In  exact  correspondence  with 
these  two  achievements  of  the  Zeitgeist  are  Froe- 

^bel's  two  revelations  to  education.  The  first  of 
these  revelations  is  that  children  shall  no  longer 
be  shaped  and  fashioned  by  outside  pressure,  but 
shall  be  abetted  in  their  native  effort  to  develop 
through  self-expression.  The  second  and  no  less 
important  revelation  is  that  in  many  of  their  fa- 
vorite plays  what  they  express  are  generic  im- 
pulses, and  that,  therefore,  through  freighting 
play  with  the  values  of  human  life  we  enable  chil- 
dren to  realize  more  rapidly  and  surely  their  own 
impelling  ideal. 

The  preceding  brief  statement  of  FroebeFs  edu- 
cational aim  and  method  suggests  the  striking 
contrast  between  his  procedure  and  that  of  Her- 
bart.  This  practical  contrast  is  rooted  in  a  con- 
trasting psychology.  As  has  been  indicated,  the 
fundamental  thesis  of  Herbart's  psychology  is 
that  presentations  are  the  elements  of  mental  life, 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL  145 

and  the  self  a  product  of  their  fusion.  The  psy- 
chology of  Froebel,  on  the  contrary,  holds  that 
the  self  is  an  aboriginal  energy  whose  ideal  form 
is  self-consciousness,  and  whose  history  is  a  pro- 
gressive realization  and  definition  of  its  own  im- 
plications. Self-consciousness  is  the  knowing  of 
the  self,  by  the  self,  and  such  knowing  implies 
both  the  distinction  of  subject  and  object,  and  the 
recognition  of  their  identity.  The  life  of  the  ego 
is  therefore  a  process  of  continuous  self-diremp- 
tion,  and  of  the  reintegration  of  its  dirempted  ele- 
ments in  a  synthetic  unity. 

Since  the  ego  is  not  a  mere  something  which 
incidentally  possesses  activity,  but  is  self-activity, 
and  nothing  but  self-activity,  its  primal  and  con- 
straining impulse  must  be  action,  and  it  will  rush 
outward  into  deed.  Self-expression  will  precede 
assimilation  and  determine  what  shall  be  assimi- 
lated. For  this  reason  Froebel  seeks  the  point  of 
departure  for  education  in  play  which  he  defines 
as  "  self -active  representation  of  the  inner  life, 
from  inner  necessity  and  impulse." 

The  opposition  between  Herbart  and  Froebel 
indicated  in  their  pedagogics  and  defined  in  the 
contrasting  theses  of  their  respective  psychologies, 
may  be  traced  to  an  emotional  root  in  the  impene- 
trable coldness  of  the  one  and  the  fervid  response 
of  the  other  to  the  mood  of  a  wonderful  age,  and 
to  an  intellectual  root  in  the  antithetic  concep- 


146  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

tions  of  ultimate  reality  which  are  the  thought- 
precipitates  of  these  contradictory  emotional  at- 
titudes. To  the  atomic  system  of  Herbart,  which 
regards  the  universe  as  an  aggregate  of  monads 
(and  therefore  not  a  universe  at  all),  Froebel  op- 
poses an  ontology  whose  creative  idea  is  that  ulti- 
mate reality  is  absolute  reason  or  perfectly  real- 
ized self-consciousness.  It  is  true  that  Froebel 
must  be  classed  as  a  mystic,  and  a  mystic  is  a 
person  who  is  making  an  inward  transition  from 
faith  to  philosophy  by  beginning  to  realize  in  the 
typical  facts  of  religion  a  universal  significance. 
Being  a  mystic  Froebel  never  achieved  a  scientific 
statement  of  his  ontologic  convictions.  Neverthe- 
less, his  writings  make  evident  that  in  a  more 
or  less  adequate  form  he  was  aware  of  the  several 
great  implications  of  absolute  self-consciousness. 
These  implications  are  a  perfect  subject  who  has 
eternally  duplicated  himself  in  a  perfect  object; 
a  manifold  cosmos  pervaded  by  law  and  objecti- 
fying the  infinite  multiplicity  of  distinctions 
pervaded  by  the  unity  of  divine  thinking ;  an  evo- 
lutionary ascent  of  nature  determined  by  increas- 
ing participation  in  the  divine  first  principle  and 
culminating  in  man  in  whom  is  incarnate  the 
form  of  self-consciousness,  which  is  freedom; 
finally,  the  progressive  realization  by  man  of  the 
substance  of  freedom  through  a  social  communion 
made  possible  by  the  fact  that  since  every  man 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL  147 

partakes   of   absolute  reason,    all   men   may   and 
should  be  partakers  of  each  other.  ^ 

Froebel's  psychology  is  that  of  the  great  think- 
ers who  achieved  the  highest  triumph  of  human 
intellect.  His  own  more  modest  "  acts  of  orig- 
inality "  are  a  study  of  childhood  wherein  its 
manifestations  are  interpreted  by  the  light  of  the 
/idea  of  self-activity;  a  method  of  early  education 
respondent  to  these  interpreted  manifestations, 
and  a  series  of  instrumentalities  indispensable  for 
the  reduction  of  the  method  into  practice.  Only 
as  the  kindergarten  games  and  gifts  are  studied 
in  detail  does  the  student  realize  the  rich  contri- 
bution of  Froebel's  psychology  to  his  pedagogics. 
From  his  conception  of  the  child  as  a  self-creative 
being  flowed  his  emphasis  upon  the  priority  of  the 
deed.  From  insight  into  the  truth  that  institu- 
tions, arts,  sciences,  and  literature  are  self-defini- 
tions of  the  mind  in  which  all  individuals  par- 
ticipate sprang  his  idea  of  freighting  the  plays 
of  childhood  with  the  values  of  life.  From  his 
doctrine  of  the  ascent  of  mind  from  the  fact 
Vthrough  the  symbol  to  the  general  idea  arose  his 
accent  upon  imitative  games,  typical  objects,  acts, 
processes,  and  characters,  and  the  natural  ana- 
logues of  elementary  human  experiences.  From 
the  assurance  that  self-consciousness  implies  self- 
duplication  proceeded   his  idea  of  presenting  to 

» See  Chapter  XII. 


148  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

the  child  in  each  stage  of  development  an  objec- 
tive counterpart.  From  conviction  of  the  neces- 
sity of  objectifying  the  unity  of  consciousness,  its 
structural  form,  and  its  manifold  content  sprang 
the  three  types  of  exercise  known  as  forms  of 
knowledge,  beauty,  and  life.  And  to  give  only 
one  more  illustration,  from  the  vision  of  self- 
consciousness  as  "  an  identity  pervading  its  own 
distinctions,"  was  born  the  attempt  to  make  the 
instrumentalities  of  the  kindergarten  an  organism 
wherein  each  member  should  be  means  and  end 
for  all  the  other  members,  and  for  (the  including 
whole. 

No  man  can  be  so  mightily  possessed  by  an  idea 
as  was  Froebel  without  being  betrayed  into  some 
exaggerations.  The  enlightened  lover  of  the  kin- 
dergarten will  crave  criticism  of  his  mistakes,  as 
well  as  recognition  of  his  merits.  But  criticism, 
to  be  sound  and  valuable,  demands  a  practical 
knowledge  of  the  way  in  which  his  instrumen- 
talities are  used,  which  thus  far  few  if  any  of 
his  critics  have  possessed.  It  must  be  conceded 
that  his  effort  is  unique  and  his  results  original. 
In  his  interpretations  of  childhood  he  surpasses 
not  only  all  his  contemporaries,  but  all  his  suc- 
cessors. By  freighting  play  with  ideal  values  he 
created  a  type  of  education  which  respects  both 
the  form  and  the  substance  of  freedom.  By  rec- 
ognizing the  supreme  value  of  that  kind  of  ap- 


HERBART  AND  FROEBEL        149 

perception  which  is  dependent  on  the  nature  of 
the  mind,  he  made  a  signal  contribution  to  edu- 
cational psychology.  It  would  be  his  own  dearest 
wish  that  others  should  do  better  what  he  has  done 
so  well.  But  he  must  be  overtaken  before  he  can 
be  left  behind. 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE    FBEE-PLAY    PKOGEAMME 

The  most  Incid  expression  of  the  free-play 
programme,  and  the  most  complete  illustration 
of  its  practical  workings  are  to  be  found  in  a 
monograph  entitled  The  Kindergarten  Problem 
which  was  published  in  1899.  The  preface  to  the 
monograph  describes  it  as  "  a  report  upon  one 
year's  work  in  a  kindergarten  system  which  had 
broken  somewhat  with  tradition."  The  conditions 
causing  the  break,  and  the  general  plan  adopted, 
in  order  to  bring  new  life  into  the  Froebelian  val- 
ley of  dry  bones,  are  clearly  stated  in  the  following 
extract : 

The  conviction,  for  years  latent  and  urgent  for 
recognition,  that  free  play  is  the  only  rational  solu- 
tion to  Froebel's  plea  for  self-activity,  the  undoubted 
truth  of  the  revelations  of  child  study  with  regard  to 
the  ancestral  and  racial  traits  of  childhood,  led  to  the 
adoption  of  two  recess  periods  of  twenty  minutes  each 
for  spontaneous  play  in  the  kindergartens,  to  take  the 
place  of  the  regular  kindergarten  games,  and  the 
150 


THE   FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  151 

eagerness  with  which  the  play  incentives  were  appro- 
priated and  put  into  active  service  by  the  children  re- 
vealed the  strength  of  their  interests.  At  first,  but 
few  incentives  were  given,  owing  to  ignorance  of  the 
best  incentives  for  their  use,  but  as  observation  and 
experience  strengthened  theory,  the  list  gradually  in- 
creased and  modified  the  original  provision  made. 
To  a  few  bean  bags,  tin  street  cars,  wooden  soldiers, 
and  a  cloth  elephant,  whose  only  recommendation  for 
popularity  was  his  obliging  disposition  in  sacrificing 
his  dignity  by  becoming  a  football,  and  who  was  res- 
cued from  the  sure  fate  which  overtakes  all  who  tam- 
per with  the  game,  have  been  added  in  the  order 
named,  sand  piles,  dolls,  toy  dishes,  toy  brooms  and 
dustpans,  toy  washboards,  reins,  gas  balls,  hammers 
and  nails,  garden  tools,  footballs,  facilities  for  climb- 
ing, jumping,  seesaws,  swings,  and  the  latest  achieve- 
ment, a  children's  playhouse,  where  the  tiny  house- 
keepers can  keep  the  miniature  family  in  the  most 
approved  manner,  and  still  have  the  benefit  of  the 
fresh  air  and  sunshine. 

The  bean  bags,  the  wooden  soldiers,  the  tin  street 
cars,  and  his  lordship,  the  elephant,  have  been  con- 
signed to  the  oblivion  of  deserved  rest — but  the  sand 
piles  have  still  the  busy  chattering  groups  of  little 
ones,  digging  wells  and  tunnels,  molding  and  baking 
in  the  sun  the  succulent  pies  and  cakes  so  well  known 
to  our  own  happy  childhood,  sifting  the  clean,  dry, 
fascinating  sand  until  the  sudden  temptation  to  send 
a  mimic  cyclonic  deluge  over  unsuspecting  comrades 
is  only  diverted  into  more  legitimate  channels  by  the 
prompt  action  of  the  ever-vigilant  and  ever-present 
kindergartner. 

The  dolls,  the  toy  dishes,  brooms,  washboards,  and 


152  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

flatirons  have  a  full  share  of  attention  from  girls  and 
boys  alike.  The  house  is  swept  and  garnished,  in 
the  enthusiasm  of  play,  some  children  considerately 
sprinkling  sand  upon  the  floor,  that  the  broom  may 
have  excuse  for  action;  the  doll  clothes  are  washed 
vigorously  in  the  sand  with  washboard  and  wooden 
soap,  and  ironed  while  the  iron  is  cold;  the  dishes 
are  washed  and  dried  with  imaginary  water  and  tow- 
els; the  dolls  are  washed  and  dressed,  one-eyed  Rosie, 
of  long-suffering  visage  and  pathetically  dangling  ap- 
pearance being  cuddled  and  loved  and  lullabied  with 
the  fairest  in  the  land ;  while  the  hostess  sets  the  table, 
not  omitting  the  tiny  vase  of  weedy  blossoms  gathered 
for  the  purpose,  and  proceeds  to  serve  to  the  sedate 
and  expectant  guests  a  banquet  fit  for  the  gods. 
Sand  is  the  basis  and  inspiration  of  the  entire  menu, 
and  the  dignity  and  propriety  of  the  occasion  is  not 
marred  by  any  unseemly  behavior,  or  the  necessity  for 
correction  to  the  verge  of  tears — there  is  no  painted 
line  here  to  say,  "  Thou  shalt  not." 

This  seems  like  cooperative  housekeeping,  but  no 
such  adult  occupation  is  in  reality  the  case.  Each 
child  is  entirely  absorbed  in  her  own  particular  bit  of 
drama,  and  cares  not  a  whit  about  the  success  of  the 
whole. 

Meanwhile,  fiery  steeds,  restless  chargers,  and  good, 
safe  family  horses  are  being  driven  about  the  grounds, 
with  long  grass  tucked  under  the  hat  brims  for  manes, 
with  tinkling  bells,  and  drivers  with  healthily  exer- 
cised lungs  to  keep  them  in  subjection;  bread,  milk, 
and  vegetables  are  delivered  without  money  and  with- 
out price  to  all  who  may  ask.  Without  rest,  or  the 
usual  variation  of  eating  and  sleeping,  with  only  an 
occasional  visit  to  the  blacksmith  for  repairs,  these 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  153 

horses  and  their  remorseless  drivers,  like  Tennyson'a 
brook,  "  go  on  fprever."  * 

Whatever  else  this  description  may  or  may  not 
be  it  is  undoubtedly  a  correct  presentation  of  the 
ideal  of  perfectly  free  play.  Each  child  is  to  do 
what  he  pleases  as  he  pleases.  We  observe,  how- 
ever, that  free  play  is  relegated  to  the  recess  pe- 
riod, and  taken  in  detachment  from  the  rest  of 
the  monograph,  the  passage  cited  merely  provokes 
doubt  as  to  the  advisability  of  forty  minutes  for 
recess  during  a  total  period  of  only  three  hours. 
The  real  issue,  however,  between  the  traditional 
kindergarten  and  the  child-study  reformers  is  not 
whether  there  shall  be  free  play  during  recess,  but 
whether  the  entire  three  hours  children  spend  in 
the  kindergarten  shall  become  a  recess  dominated 
by  this  ideal.  That  the  answer  given  to  this  ques- 
tion by  the  Santa  Barbara  experimenters  is  an 
almost  unqualified  affirmative  is  evident  from  the 
following  record  of  two  days  in  a  kindergarten: 

Monday:  The  morning  being  pleasant,  we  had  our 
marching  and  singing  outdoors.  One  child  was 
chosen    captain,   the    others   following   where   he    led. 

•  A  Study  of  the  Kindergarten  Problem  in  the  Public  Kin- 
dergartens of  Santa  Barbara,  California,  for  the  year  1898-99, 
by  Frederic  Burk,  Ph.D.,  City  Superintendent  of  Schools  and 
Caroline  Frear  Burk,  A.M.,  in  cooperation  with  Orpha  M. 
Quayle,  Supervisor  of  Kindergartens,  Juliet  Powell  Rice^ 
Supervisor  of  Music,  and  Martha  D.  Tallant.    pp.  38,  39. 


154  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

There  was  single-file  marching,  double-file  marching, 
straight-line  marching,  curved-line  marching,  slow 
marching,  fast  marching,  and  every  other  kind  of 
marching  that  could  be  thought  of  hy  one  little  hrain. 
After  the  marching  came  free-choice  singing,  the 
children  volunteering  their  favorite  songs. 

At  9.30  they  all  marched  into  the  schoolroom,  and 
at  the  signal  from  the  piano  took  their  seats  and  sat 
waiting  for  the  usual  morning  story.  This  morning 
the  story  was  of  The  Wolf  and  the  Crane.  As  the 
children  had  seen  the  pictures  of  both  a  wolf  and  a 
crane  among  their  collection  of  colored  pictures,  they 
thought  that  those  were  surely  the  originals  of  the 
story.  After  the  telling  of  the  story,  the  children 
were  asked  to  illustrate  it  on  paper.  After  the  illus- 
trations they  were  given  five  minutes  for  free  drawing 
at  the  board. 

From  10.05  to  10.25  recess  was  given.  As  usual,  the 
football  took  a  prominent  place  in  the  games,  as  did 
also  sand-building,  swinging,  and  jumping. 

From  10.25  to  10.30  was  occupied  in  marching 
to  the  seats  and  resting,  the  piano  being  played 
very  softly,  while  all  the  little  heads  rested  on  the 
tables. 

From  10.30  to  10.50  was  devoted  to  color  work,  the 
children  placing  on  a  string  first  all  beads  of  one 
color;  next,  beads  of  another  color,  and  so  on  until 
all  six  colors  were  used.  This  they  all  did  very  read- 
ily, with  the  exception  of  one  little  boy,  who  is  appar- 
ently color-blind. 

From  10.50  to  10.55  the  children  were  allowed  to 
look  at  a  collection  of  scrap  books  which  had  been 
given  them  and  to  converse  freely  about  them. 

11.05  to  11.25,  recess. 


THE  FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  155 

11.25  to  11.30,  marching  to  seats  and  resting. 

11.30  to  11.50,  free  play  with  any  of  the  kindergar- 
ten material  which  each  individual  chose. 

11.50  to  12,  they  put  away  the  material  and  sang  the 
closing  song. 

Tuesday:  The  school  opened  with  free  marchings, 
after  which  the  children  sang  chosen  songs. 

At  9.30  the  children  took  their  seats,  when  the  story 
of  The  Dog  and  the  Bone  was  told  them.  Then 
they  illustrated  the  story  on  paper  and  told  it.  Before 
the  hour  closed  five  minutes  were  devoted  to  circle 
drawing  on  the  board,  using  the  free-arm  movement. 

10.05  to  10.25,  recess. 

The  day  was  foggy,  so  the  greater  number  of  the 
little  girls  stayed  inside  and  played  house,  while  the 
majority  of  the  little  boys  and  girls  on  the  ground 
enjoyed  climbing  upon  the  fence  and  jumping  down 
into  the  sand.  A  few  of  the  boys  played  football, 
and  two  little  girls  played  with  the  swings. 

10.25  to  10.30,  they  marched  to  seats  and  rested. 
(This  rest  period  seems  very  beneficial,  as  with  very 
little  exception  the  children  seem  to  enter  into  the 
spirit  of  it.) 

10.30  to  10.50,  number  lesson.  I  gave  them  a  piece 
of  clay,  then,  drawing  three  circles  on  the  board,  told 
them  to  make  that  number  of  marbles.  After  the  les- 
son they  were  permitted  to  make  anything  they 
wished  from  the  clay. 

10.50  to  11.05,  a  collection  of  bird  pictures  was 
looked  at  and  talked  about.  The  pictures  had  been 
put  away  for  several  days,  consequently  were  enjoyed 
more  than  usual. 

11.05  to  11.25,  recess.  Again  the  fence-climbing  and 
jumping  ivere  indulged  in  to  a  great  extent. 


156  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

11.25  to  11.30,  marching  and  rest. 
11.30  to  11.50,  free  play^ 

Is  it  possible  to  conceive  a  programme  in  which 
the  ideal  of  free  play  could  be  more  consistently 
carried  out.  The  marching  was  free,  the  singing 
was  free,  the  selection  of  games  was  free,  the 
choice  of  material  was  free,  the  method  of  using 
it  was  free,  the  illustrations  of  stories  were  free, 
and  lest  all  this  freedom  should  be  insufficient  for 
purposes  of  development,  there  were  given,  both 
days,  two  recess  periods  of  twenty  minutes  each. 
There  is  not  a  single  word  in  the  diary  to  suggest 
that  any  effort  was  made  to  lead  the  children  to 
build  better,  draw  better,  model  better,  or  do  any- 
thing better  than  they  were  originally  able  to  do. 
The  only  inconsistencies  in  the  two  days'  record 
are  the  twenty  minutes  spent  in  stringing  beads, 
and  the  five  minutes  presumably  required  to  make 
three  marbles.  With  these  exceptions  the  chil- 
dren did  nothing  but  amuse  themselves  or  suffer 
themselves  to  be  amused  by  the  kindergartner. 
It  may  be  added  that  even  the  stringing  and 
marble-making  exercises  were  practically  effort- 
less. 

Ignoring  for  the  moment  the  self-refuting  dia- 
lectic of  the   free-play   theory   as   expounded   by 

•The  Kindergarten  Problem,  pp.  118-20.  (Italics  mine.) 
— Alice  L.  Blackford. 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  157 

its  advocates,  and  assuming  that  the  freedom 
claimed  were  possible,  let  us  frankly  recognize 
that  to  carry  out  this  theory  would  mean  not  a 
modification  of  the  historic  kindergarten  but  a 
complete  revolution  of  its  principles  and  prac- 
tices.    The  institution  which  Froebel  originated 

l^was  conceived  by  him  as  a  transition  from  the 
nursery  to  the  school.  The  nursery  is  a  place  for 
free  play.  The  school  is  a  place  for  work.  The 
kindergarten   is  a   mediatorial   realm  wherein    a 

\^ran8ition  is  made  from  play  to  work.  As  was 
explained  in  the  preceding  chapter  of  this  book, 
the  transition  is  effected  by  grafting  upon  selected 
plays  which  reveal  germinal  tendencies  toward 
the  values  of  human  life  the  higher  expression 
of  their  own  ideal.  The  value  of  the  graft  is 
tw(>^ld.  It  develops  the  mind  through  its  own 
free  impulsion.  It  renews  the  energy  of  ideals 
which  had  been  paralyzed  by  their  external  im- 
position. The  values  of  life  must  not  be  conceived 
as  artificial  flowers  fastened  by  some  external 
hand  upon  a  plant  which  could  never  have  pro- 
duced them,  but  as  the  perfect  blossom  in  which 
the  plant  completes  its  life  and  provides  for  its 
own  renewal.^ 

Contrasting  the  free-play  programme  with  the 
concentric  programme  we  become  aware  that  each 
is  the  fruit  of  a  partial  conception  of  the  child. 

»  See  Chapter  V,  pp.  140-144. 


158  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

The  concentric  programme  conceives  him  as  pre- 
ponderantly a  learning  being,  and  thereby  retreats 
from  the  position  of  Froebel  to  that  of  the  tra- 
ditional schoolmaster.  The  free-play  programme 
conceives  him  as  a  sentient  being  who  reacts  upon 
stimuli  from  his  environment,  and  by  its  claim 
that  there  must  be  no  interference  with  "  the 
primal  hereditary  impulsions  "  retreats  from  the 
position  of  Froebel  to  that  of  Rousseau.  The 
Froebelian  programme  harmonizes  the  mutually 
excluding  conceptions  of  established  education 
and  educational  reform  by  accentuating  those 
modes  of  self-expression  which  reveal  and  confirm 
generic  selfhood. 

A  revolution  in  principle  must  revolutionize 
practice,  and  a  revolutionized  practice  must  de- 
,  mand  changed  instrumentalities.  The  Santa  Bar- 
^  bara  experimenters  were  convinced  that  "  abso- 
lutely free  play  is  the  only  rational  solution  to 
Froebel's  plea  for  self -activity."  The  first  result 
of  this  changed  conviction  was  the  addition  of- 
numerous  instrumentalities,  e.  g.,  seesaws,  swings, 
climbing  poles,  and  promiscuous  toys,  supposed  to 
be  necessary  as  "  play  incentives."  The  second 
result  was  a  decision  that  "  the  kindergarten  is 
loaded  down  with  an  unsifted  mass  of  material 
which  has  been  chosen  by  the  adult  mind  as  suit- 
able for  the  logical  development  of  the  child."  ^ 

» The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  81. 


THE   FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  159 

It  was  therefore  deemed  necessary  to  discover  the 
spontaneous  reaction  of  children  toward  the  tradi- 
tional kindergarten  materials,  and  a  test  experi- 
ment was  made  which  our  monograph  describes 
as  follows : 

Every  day  for  half  an  hour  the  kindergarten  mate- 
rials, the  gifts  and  occupations,  were  spread  on  a 
table,  and  each  child  chose  what  one  thing  he  cared 
to  play  with  for  that  time.  At  first  the  idea  was  car-, 
tied  out  in  the  form  of  a  play;  the  table  and  its  con- 
tents were  supposed  to  be  a  store,  and  the  children 
came,  and,  using  the  tablets  or  parquetry  circles  for 
money,  bought  what  they  wanted,  so  that  that  half 
hour  of  the  day  came  to  be  known  as  "  store  time,"  a 
name  which  clung  to  it  long  after  the  "  store "  idea 
was  reduced  simply  to  the  less  romantic  "  free-choice 
time."  Each  child  took  his  material  to  his  seat,  as  a 
rule,  and  there  did  what  he  pleased  with  it.* 

The  results  of  this  effort  to  determine  by  a  "  sci- 
entific "  test  the  interest  of  children  in  the  dif- 
ferent materials  of  the  kindergarten  demand  our 
careful  consideration.  The  materials  preferred 
by  the  younger  children  stated  in  the  order  of 
preference  were  beads,  clay,  the  sewing  card,  the 
tile  board,  parquetry,  blocks,  and  the  first  gift. 
The  per  cent  of  choices  for  blocks  and  balls  were, 
however,  very  small,  being  in  each  case  only  seven 
per  cent   (7^),  as  opposed  to  nineteen  per  cent 

» The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  81. 
13 


160  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

(19^)  for  beads,  eighteen  per  cent  (18^)  for  clay, 
thirteen  and  one  half  per  cent  (13^^)  for  the 
sewing  card,  ten  and  one  half  per  cent  (10^^)  for 
the  tile  board,  and  ten  per  cent  (10^)  for  par- 
quetry. With  the  older  children  there  was  less 
variety  of  selection,  forty-one  per  cent  (41^)  of 
all  choices  being  given  to  the  sewing  card,  and 
twenty-nine  per  cent  (29^)  to  clay.  The  remain- 
ing thirty  choices  were  scattering,  the  only  gifts 
or  occupations  which  received  more  than  three 
choices  being  parquetry,  eight  choices,  and  blocks, 
six  choices. 

The  choices  of  the  younger  children  are  readily 
explained.  They  were  naturally  attracted  by  ma- 
terials whose  possibilities  were  obvious.  They 
could  see  at  once  something  to  be  done  with  beads, 
clay,  tile  boards,  blocks,  and  balls.  Sewing  and 
parquetry  offer  fewer  technical  difficulties  than 
many  other  occupations,  and  hence  are  generally, 
among  the  first  into  whose  use  children  are  in- 
itiated. The  choices  of  the  second-year  children 
force  the  conclusion  that  there  had  been  lack  of 
intelligent  guidance.  These  children  had  not  been 
led  to  discover  the  richer  possibilities  of  the  build- 
ing gifts,  hence  the  chart  shows  a  waning  interesf^ 
in  blocks  instead  of  the  waxing  interest  which 
thirty  years  of  collective  experience  justifies  us  in 
expecting.  Tablets,  sticks,  and  rings,  whose  varied  1 
uses   children   need   help   to   find,    were   scarcely 


THE   FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  161 

chosen  at  all;  cutting,  now  almost  universally 
admitted  to  be  one  of  the  most  popular,  as  well 
as  one  of  the  most  educative  occupations  of  the 
kindergarten,  was  chosen  by  only  three  children. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  sewing  card  received  forty- 
one  (41)  choices,  a  preponderance  which  expe- 
rienced kindergartners  cannot  forbear  to  connect 
with  the  fact  that  of  all  occupations,  sewing  is 
the  one  which,  after  its  few  technical  difficulties 
are  overcome,  can  be  given  with  least  strain  upon 
the  director;  which,  for  this  reason,  tends  to  be 
constantly  declined  upon  by  easy-going  kinder- 
gartners, and  in  which,  therefore,  children  most 
often  become  capable  of  creative  work.  On  the 
whole,  the  experiment  in  Santa  Barbara  would 
seem  to  have  tested  the  ability  of  kindergartners 
rather  than  the  interests  of  children,  and  the  judg- 
ment the  student  is  forced  to  pass  upon  it  is,  that 
it  failed  in  the  essential  conditions  of  a  scientific 
experiment,  because  it  did  not  eliminate  disturb- 
ing influences.  It  may  be  added  that  such  elim- 
ination is  practically  impossible  in  a  test  of  the 
kind  attempted.  The  jumble  of  different  mate- 
rials distracts  unstable  minds,  and  predisposes  to 
imperative  or  vacillating  choices.  The  fact  that 
some  of  the  occupations  which  children  like  best 
after  they  have  learned  to  use  them  do  not  ap- 
peal to  them  at  all  until  they  have  learned  to  use 
them,  makes  the  test  of  immediate  choice  unfair 


162  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

and  misleading.  The  defects  of  directors  create 
disturbing  influences  of  the  most  serious  kinds. 
I^inally,  the  director's  own  judgments  of  value  are  • 
sure  to  react  upon  her  children.^  The  Sant^  <^j 
Barbara  experiment,  for  example,  was  made  at  a 
time  when  the  minds  of  revolutionary  kinder- 
gartners  were  under  the  spell  of  critics  who  had 
raised  a  mighty  hue  and  cry  against  the  geome- 
try of  Froebel's  gifts.  Therefore,  out  of  a  total 
of  two  hundred  choices  only  thirteen  were  given 
to  building  blocks,  and  one  and  one  third  to  the 
second  gift.  Since  that  time  innovating  kinder- 
gartners  have  convinced  themselves  that  material 
which  permits  representation  in  three  dimensions 
is  preferable  to  material  which  permits  only  rep- 
resentation in  the  flat.  In  swift  conformity  to 
this  changed  point  of  view  children's  tastes  now 
incline  graciously  toward  the  solid  gifts — and 
even  the  despised  and  rejected  sphere,  cube,  and 
cylinder  is  restored  to  a  place  of  honor.  The 
practical  conclusion  to  which  we  are  forced  by 
these  facts  is  that,  if  further  test  of  the  Froe- 
belian  instrumentalities  is  necessary,  the  only 
reasonable  test  is  the  gradually  accumulating 
experience  of  the  collective  body  of  kindergart- 
ners.     The  results  of  this  test  as  carried  out  dur- 

•  In  later  test  exp>eriments  the  jumble  of  kindergarten 
materials  has  been  avoided.  The  other  disturbing  influences, 
however,  remain  in  full  force. 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  163 

ing  the  past  thirty-five  years  would  seem  to  give 
a  priority  of  both  interest  and  value  to  building 
blocks,  cutting,  drawing,  coloring,  clay  work,  par- 
quetry, and  sewing.  It  is,  however,  a  non  sequi- 
tur  conclusion  that  because  these  occupations  lead 
in  interest  and  value  all  others  are  devoid  of  in- 
terest and  valueless.  The  interest  and  value  of 
tablets,  sticks,  rings,  folding,  weaving,  and  card- 
board modeling  are  very  little  less  than  the  interest 
and  value  of  the  occupations  already  mentioned, 
and,  finally,  even  those  Froebelian  instrumentali- 
ties which  possess  the  minimum  of  interest  and 
value  cannot  be  entirely  discarded  without  loss  to 
the  child  and  some  degree  of  failure  to  realize  the 
ideal  of  the  kindergarten  as  a  wise  transition  from 
the  nursery  to  the  schoolroom. 

It  is  too  often  forgotten  that  the  traditional  ma- 
terial of  the  kindergarten  is  justified  by  the  re- 
sults of  test  experiments  carried  out  through  cen- 
turies. Balls,  building  blocks,  and  materials  for 
arrangement  games  have  commended  themselves 
to  the  taste  of  children  and  the  judgment  of  par- 
ents all  over  the  world  and  through  the  ages.  An 
equally  extended  range  of  experience  justifies 
simple  folding,  weaving,  twisting,  or  intertwin- 
ing and  embroidery,  and  as  for  the  sand  pile,  clay, 
pencil,  paper,  and  coloring  material,  the  evidence 
in  favor  both  of  their  value  and  their  appeal  is 
surely    suflficient    to    satisfy    the    most    skeptical. 


164  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

There  are  so  many  things  still  to  be  found  out 
that  it  seems  foolishness  to  waste  time  discov- 
ering the  already  known,  and  settling  the  already 
established. 

To  the  criticisms  thus  far  made  upon  the  test 
experiment  in  Santa  Barbara  some  readers  may 
raise  the  objection  that  the  free-choice  period  was 
a  temporary  device,  and  that  doubtless  when  its 
results  were  attained  the  jumble  of  kindergarten 
materials  was  discontinued  and  the  planless  meth- 
od of  allowing  each  child  to  do  as  he  pleased  with 
the  object  of  his  capricious  election  was  set  aside 
in  favor  of  a  more  rational  procedure.  Our  mono- 
graph will  not  permit  us  to  solace  ourselves  with 
this  false  comfort.  The  experimenting  kinder- 
gartners,  we  are  told,  are  eager  to  keep  up  the 
free-choice  period  for  its  effect  upon  the  children, 
and  they  "  pity  the  poor  little  starved,  straight- 
laced  mortals  who  are  restricted  to  the  paltry 
pabulum  of  the  dictation  exercise."  As  we  read 
this  statement  a  doubt  arises  in  our  minds,  which 
further  study  of  the  Kindergarten  Problem  con- 
firms. Its  authors  know  only  the  crude  antithesis 
between  free  play  and  dictation,  and  suppose 
that  children  must  either  do  exactly  as  they  please, 
or  exactly  as  the  kindergartner  prescribes.  The 
mediatorial  methods  of  the  kindergarten — the 
method  of  transit  from  imitation  toward  orig- 
inality; the  method  of  suggested  subject  which, 


THE   FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  165 

by  eliminating  indecision  as  to  what  shall  be 
done  concentrates  attention  on  how  it  shall  be 
done,  and  leaves  children  free  to  work  out  their 
own  plan  of  procedure;  the  method  of  free  ini- 
tiative with  expert  reaction,  the  inciting  method 
of  the  simple  problem,  the  sympathetic  method  of 
class  or  group  work,  wherein  each  child  profits  by 
the  ideas  of  his  fellows,  are  all  conspicuous  by 
their  absence.  In  my  judgment,  lack  of  knowl- 
edge of  these  mediatorial  methods  explains  the 
dissatisfaction  of  many  kindergartners  with  the 
instrumentalities  of  Froebel. 

The  first  fallacy  which  created  the  so-called 
/"ree-play  movement  was  the  conception  of  the  kin- 
dergarten as  "  a  substitute  for  childish  play  in  ' , 
its  totality."  It  is  with  this  fallacy  alone  that  our 
discussion  has  thus  far  been  concerned.  The 
constant  juxtaposition  of  free  play  with  play  in- 
centives suggests  a  second  fallacy  which  appar- 
ently exercises  compelling  influence  over  the  au- 
thors of  the  Kindergarten  Problem.  This  second 
fallacy  is  the  conception  of  the  child  as  a  creature 
wholly  dominated  by  instinct,  and  therefore  a 
slave  to  the  suggestions  of  environment.  "  The 
system  of  Dame  Instinct,"  we  are  told,  is  quite 
as  complete  as  most  systems  furnished  by  the  log- 
ical adult,  "  and  not  half  so  stupid,  either."  *  .  .  . 

>  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  44, 


166  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

"  Instinct,  however,  is  not  the  only  factor  to  be 
considered.  Environment  is  equally  important. 
For  instinct  often  remains  dormant  unless  the 
incentive  furnished  by  the  environment  and  nec- 
essary to  the  development  of  the  instinct  is  pres- 
ent. .  .  .  Environment  given,  instinct  becomes 
a  selective  agent."  ^  Hence,  all  kindergarten 
gifts  are  offered  as  "  incentives,"  and  bean  bags, 
tin  street  cars,  wooden  soldiers,  cloth  elephant, 
dolls,  dishes,  dustpans,  washboards,  flatirons, 
reins,  hammers,  garden  tools,  footballs,  seesaws, 
and  swings  presented  in  motley  array  either  arrest 
development  by  delivering  little  victims  of  sug- 
gestion over  to  the  slavery  of  imperative  impulse, 
or  create  vacillating  wills  by  provoking  a  desul- 
tory and  constantly  changing  activity.^ 

Among  the  more  important  facts  to  which 
modern  psychology  has  called  attention  are  the 
pathologic  conditions  arising  from  disorganiza- 
tion of  the  will.     Hypochondria  is  an  acute  form 


»  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  45. 

» "The  introduction  of  some  simple  reins  of  red  tape  with 
bells  has  spread  the  enthusiasm  for  horse  like  wildfire.  .  .  . 
These  horses  and  their  remorseless  drivers,  like  Tennyson's 
brook,  'go  on  forever.'" — Ibid.,  pp.  45  and  39.  "Rubber 
balls  were  furnished  freely  and  were  the  germs  of  a  chronic 
and  incurable  disease  of  ball-playing.  ...  A  box  of  toys 
has  lately  been  placed  in  the  yard  of  one  of  the  kinder- 
gartens and  a  general  rush  is  made  for  this  at  every  recess." 
— Ibid.,  p.  45. 


THE   FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  167 

of  subjection  to  an  imperative  impulse  or  idea. 
Hysteria  is  a  chaotic  disorder  of  "  segmented " 
will.  Lesser  degrees  of  the  tendencies  which  cul- 
minate in  these  acute  disorders  are  common  to  all 
men.  In  virtue  of  native  temperament  most  lit- 
tle children  are  prone  either  toward  subjection 
to  a  master  impulse  or  toward  that  "  fickleness 
of  conduct "  that  "  irrational  change  of  plan 
which  can  itself  become  a  hopelessly  fixed  habit 
in  a  given  brain."  *  One  great  duty  of  education 
is  to  assist  them  so  to  integrate  themselves  that 
they  may  escape  the  danger  to  which  these  defects 
expose  them,  and  the  best  method  yet  devised  for 
the  accomplishment  of  this  aim  is  the  creation  of 
a  healthy  selective  interest  through  the  doing  of 
typical  deeds.  Professor  Royce  tells  us  that 
"  We  must  get  children  to  do  before  they  can  con- 
sciously will  this  or  that  particular  form  of  do- 
ing." "  Involuntary  conduct,"  he  writes,  "  must 
precede  the  voluntary,  but  the  right  sort  of  invol- 
untary conduct  you  can  only  establish  through 
appeals  to  the  feelings  and  through  presenting  the 
fitting  objects  of  knowledge  to  the  intellect."  - 
"/The  method  of  the  Froe^elianJdndergarten  which 
incites  typical  deeds  through  appeal  to  imag- 
ination, and  which,  by  means  of  typical  deeds, 


«  Outlines  of  Psychology,  Josiah  Royce,  p.  69. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  374.     See  Chapter  II  of  this  book. 


168  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

creates  a  rational  selective  interest,  is  a  practical 
effort  to  realize  this  primary  demand  of  true  edu- 
cation. The  method  of  the  free  play  kindergar- 
ten, which  tightens  upon  the  child  of  strong  na- 
tive bias  the  chains  of  heredity  and  environment, 
and  increases  the_  tendency  of  capricious  wills  to 
hesitant  and  vacillating  choices,  is  a  parody  on 
all  education.  Persistent  surrender  to  any  master 
impulse  augments  the  danger  of  becoming  en- 
slaved by  others,  and  fickle  deeds  must  beget  fickle 
and  irresolute  characters. 

The  self-refuting  dialectic  of  the  free-play 
ideal  should  now  be  apparent  to  the  careful 
reader.  That  ideal  has  a  bifurcated  root.  One 
fork  of  this  root  is  the  gratuitous  assumption 
that  the  kindergarten  should  be  given  over  to 
perfectly  free  play,  the  other  is  that  exag- 
gerated emphasis  upon  hereditary  impulse  and 
environment  which  denies  all  freedom,  and  cul- 
minates in  the  conception  of  play  as  a  fated 
activity. 

The  collapse  of  free  play  into  reflex  or  semi- 
reflex  activities  is  more  completely  illustrated  in 
a  chapter  of  the  Kindergarten  Problem  which  re- 
lates to  plays  of  physical  action.  "  The  essence  of 
play,"  we  are  told,  is  that  it  "  should  be  directed 
S  by  the  hereditary  and  instinctive  impulses  from 
within.  And  the  aesthetic  or  morally  instinctive 
games  of  the  kindergarten  are  to  be  ranked  with 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  169 

a  diet  of  beefsteak  for  suckling  infants."  ^  In- 
herited impulses  must  be  called  into  activity  by 
external  stimulus,  hence  the  kindergarten  should 
provide  "  clean  sand  to  roll,  build,  and  model  in. 
mounds  to  jump  from,  poles  to  climb,  balustrades 
to  slide  from,  paths  to  run  in,  bushes  to  hide  in, 
balls  to  throw,  hammers  with  which  to  pound,"  ^ 
and  a  goodly  number  of  other  incentives,  such  as 
swings,  jumping-ropes,  and  seesaws.  These  in- 
centives quicken  hereditary  impulses,  and  call  into 
exercise  our  larger  muscles.  "  It  is  a  noticeable 
fact,"  says  our  monograph,  "  that  in  running, 
kicking,  jumping,  throwing,  climbing,  wrestling, 
turning  somersaults,  etc.,  only  fundamental  move- 
ments are  brought  into  play.  Our  tree-dwelling 
ancestors  might  have  performed,  and  did  perform 
any  and  all  of  these  movements,  so  that  they  are 
handed  down  to  the  child's  nervous  system  with 
such  a  long  and  reputable  list  of  references  that 
he  is  fain  to  make  good  use  of  them  before  ever 
he  is  ready  to  attempt  the  newer-fangled  accessory 
movements  of  finger,  hand,  and  eye,  which  have 
been  added  to  the  curriculum  of  life  by  his  nearer 
ancestor,  man."  ^ 

The  dogma  that  "  the  larger  and  fundamental 
muscles  which  move  the  greater  joints  precede  in 
their  development  the  smaller,  finer,  or  accessory 

»  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  34. 
»/Md.,  p.  33.  »Ibid.,p.U. 


170  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

muscles  "which  move  fingers,  throat,  lips,  and 
make  all  the  more  delicate  adjustments,"  ^  is  re- 
sponsible not  only  for  much  of  the  arresting  prac- 
tice of  the  Santa  Barbara  experimenters,  but  for 
widespread  neglect  of  the  finger  games  of  the 
Mother  Play,  and  widespread  attack  upon  many 
activities  through  which  the  traditional  kinder- 
garten developed  manual  skill.  It  has  called 
forth  the  demand  that  nearly  all  kindergarten  ma- 
terial shall  be  increased  in  size,  and  finally,  it  has 
been  one  of  the  conspiring  causes  of  recent  efforts 
to  introduce  into  the  kindergarten  such  household 
industries  as  sweeping,  dusting,  and  laundry 
work.^  The  following  statement  made  by  the 
greatest  American  exponent  of  genetic  psychology 

» Adolescence,  Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall,  vol.  j,  p.  88. 

2  The  elimination  of  finger  plays  seems  to  me  an  unmixed 
evil.  The  question  of  household  industries  in  the  kinder- 
garten will  be  discussed  in  a  later  chapter.  The  enlargement 
of  kindergarten  material  involves  in  some  cases  questions 
which  psychologists  admit  to  be  still  unsettled.  For  example, 
the  increased  size  of  folding  paper  brings  up  the  unsettled 
question  of  the  maximum  limit  of  unstrained  vision.  In  other 
cases  the  enlargement  of  material  obviously  interferes  with 
educational  results,  e.  g.,  when  children  are  encouraged  to 
make  very  large  pictures  it  becomes  impossible  for  them  to 
overlook  the  picture  as  a  whole,  and  therefore  each  object  in 
the  picture  has  to  have  its  place  indicated  by  the  kinder- 
gartner.  Finally,  there  are  cases  in  which  any  decision 
involves  balancing  many  different  problems.  Thus  the  en- 
largement of  the  blocks  brings  up  the  questions  of  increased 
expense,  diminished  space  for  children  to  build  in  or  retreat 


THE   FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  171 

would  seem  to  indicate  that  revolutionary  activity 
had  been  somewhat  precipitate. 

Somewhere  or  other  the  false  notion  has  crept  into 
our  pedagogy  that  the  child's  fine  muscles  do  not  de- 
velop until  later  than  the  large  muscles.  How  can 
one  believe  such  a  false  statement  when  he  sees  a 
young  infant  clutching  with  its  little  fingers  and  ex- 
hibiting in  this  grip  one  of  its  strongest  movements? 
How  can  one  believe  this  dogma  when  he  sees  the  boys 
and  girls  in  the  first  grade  doing  all  the  work  that 
they  do  in  writing  with  the  fine  finger  muscles — liter- 
ally overdoing  this  work  in  a  very  noticeable  degree? 
The  fact  is,  the  fine  muscles  are  in  full  operation  very 
early  in  life.^ 

Surrendering  the  claim  of  prior  development 
the  question  emerges  whether  accent  upon  the  use 
of  larger  muscles  may  not  be  urged  upon  the 
ground  of  prior  muscular  coordination.  The  suf- 
ficient answer  to  this  question  is  that  the  repe- 
tition of  already  coordinated  movements  tends  to 
produce  arrest  of  development,  except  in  cases 
where  these  movements  are  included  in  new  and 
larger  coordinations.  It  is  in  virtue  of  the  abun- 
dance and  variety  of  their  diffuse  or  unorganized 
movements  that  children  can  be  led  to  form  new 
habits   of   action.      "  In  movement,   as   in   every 

from  the  tables  to  the  floor  and  loss  of  that  unit  of  measure 
which  makes  the  Froebelian  building  gifts  such  a  valuable 
preparation  for  mathematics. 

'  Genetic  Psychology  for  Teachers,  p.  222,  Charles  Hubbard 
Judd,  Ph.D.,  Leipsic.     Int.  Ed.  Series. 


172  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

other  sphere,"  writes  Dr.  Judd,  "  nature  attacks 
her  problems  by  producing  more  than  she  needs, 
and  then  picking  out  the  best.  .  .  .  Nature  starts 
out  with  a  diffuse  brain,  as  if  she  would  say 
to  the  individual,  ^  I  will  not  place  any  restric- 
tions upon  you,  but  will  let  you  have  at  first 
all  the  possible  movements  to  select  from.'  She 
stirs  up  the  brain  in  all  directiona  and  the  diffuse 
movements  begin  to  appear  in  abundance.  There 
are  movements  of  the  head  and  arms  and  feet  and 
trunk.  Not  all  are  necessary  to  the  final  form  of 
action,  and  most  will  drop  away  as  development 
goes  on.  But  in  the  whole  mass  of  movements  the 
right  ones  must  be  there,  and  development  means 
the  selection  of  the  right  movements  out  of  the 
total  mass  of  diffuse  movernents.  Only  one  lim- 
itation appears  in  all  this  provision  of  many 
movements.  This  is  the  limitation  we  have  al- 
ready noted.  ^  No  mechanism  could  be  devised 
which  would  not  in  the  general  stimulation  of  the 
muscles  affect  the  small  muscles  more  than  the 
large  ones." 

*  The  limitation  noted  is  explained  at  length  in  the  fol- 
lowing sentences:  "They  (the  fine  muscles)  are  the  muscles 
which  in  diffuse  movements  are  most  apt  to  be  called  into 
action.  It  requires  a  less  powerful  excitation  from  the 
nervous  centers  to  set  the  fine  muscles  into  action.  They 
contract  at  the  slightest  stimulation.  ...  In  short,  diffusion 
always  exaggerates  first  of  all  the  movements  of  the  fine 
muscles." 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  173 

Two  facts  would  seem  to  be  established.  The 
fine  muscles  are  in  full  operation  very  early  in 
life.  There  is  therefore  no  valid  reason  derived 
from  the  condition  of  the  child's  nervous  system 
why  fingers  and  eyes  should  not  be  duly  exercised 
as  well  as  trunks,  legs,  and  arms.  Development 
takes  place  through  the  coordination  of  diffuse 
movements.  To  put  the  almost  exclusive  emphasis 
of  the  kindergarten  upon  already  coordinated 
movements  is,  therefore,  so  far  as  we  are  able,  to 
arrest  development.^ 

No  one  can  study  Froebel's  chapter  on  move- 
ment plays  without  assurance  of  the  fact  that  he 
provides  amply  for  the  needed  exercise  of  the 
larger  muscles.  Were  his  suggestions  with  regard 
to  garden  work  carried  out,  the  fundamental  mus- 
cles would  be  still  further  called  into  use.  The 
question  at  issue  is  not  whether  fundamental  mus- 
cles shall  be  duly  exercised,  but  whether  there 
shall  be  such  an  elimination  of  the  activities  which 
exercise  the  fine  muscles  as  to  destroy  one  chief 
merit  of  the  kindergarten  as  a  factor  in  education. 

"  It  is  evident,"  writes  Dr.  Harris,  "  that  if 
the  school  is  to  prepare  for  the  arts  and  trades, 
it  is  the  kindergarten  which  is  to  accomplish  the 
object,  for  the  training  of  the  muscles,  if  it  is  to 

'  Pages  169-174  of  this  chapter  have  been  submitted  to  Dr, 
Judd,  and  I  have  his  permission  to  state  that  I  have  reprer 
sented  his  point  of  view  correctly. 


174  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

be  a  training  for  special  skill  in  manipulation, 
must  be  begun  in  early  youth.  As  age  advances 
it  becomes  more  difficult  to  acquire  new  phases  of 
manual  dexterity. 

"  Two  weeks'  practice  of  holding  objects  in  his 
right  hand  will  make  the  infant  in  his  first  year 
right-handed  for  life.  The  muscles  yet  in  pulpy 
consistency  are  very  easily  set  in  any  fixed  direc- 
tion. The  child  trained  for  one  year  in  Froebel's 
vgifts  and  occupations  will  acquire  a  skillful  use 
of  his  hands  and  a  habit  of  accurate  measurement 
of  the  eye  which  will  be  his  possession  for  life."  ^ 

The  suggestions  made  by  the  authors  of  the 
Kindergarten  Problem  with  regard  to  representa- 
tive plays  are  no  less  revolutionary  than  those  re- 
lating to  games  of  physical  culture.  We  are  told 
that  there  are  three  groups  of  representative  plays 
based  respectively  on  the  imitative,  the  construc- 
tive, and  the  dramatic  instincts.  Omitting  the 
second  group,  which  relates  chiefly  to  plays  about 
which  there  is  little  divergence  of  opinion,^  let  us 

•  History  of  the  Kindergarten  in  St.  Louis.  Annual  Report 
of  that  city. 

'"A  second  class  of  plays  requiring  more  imagination 
includes  those  which  are  based  on  the  constructive  instinct. 
Here  the  sand  pile  is  the  arena  supreme.  .  .  .The  children 
build  fences,  reservoirs,  gardens;  they  pile  up  mountains; 
they  dig  wells,  tunnels,  and  trenches;  they  erect  flag  poles; 
they  concoct  pies,  cakes,  tomales." — The  Kindergarten 
Problem,  pp.  46  and  47. 


THE  FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  175 

give  our  careful  consideration  to  groups  one  and 
three.     These  groups  are  described  as  follows: 


GROUP  I 

Being  an  animal. — Based  on  the  imitative  in- 
stinct :  horse,  fishes,  bear,  frogs,  cow,  wild  turkey,  fox, 
rattlesnake.  In  a  sequent  paragraph  we  learn  that 
"  as  a  horse  the  child  runs  and  prances  about ;  as  a 
fish,  he  swims  in  the  sand;  as  a  bear,  he  runs  and 
growls;  as  a  wild  turkey,  he  flaps  his  arras;  as  a  fox, 
he  hides  in  his  hole;  as  a  rattlesnake,  he  writhes  his 
body.'" 


GROUP  in 

Representation  of  adult  occupations. — Based  on  the 
dramatic  instinct :  blacksmith,  train  -  band,  horse- 
show,  merry-go-round,  farmer,  Santa  Clans,  baker 
shop,  bakery  wagon,  dairyman,  planting  garden,  or- 
chard, mother,  sisters,  doll  with  variations  (holding, 
rocking,  dressing,  kissing,  talking  to,  taking  to  ride, 
taking  for  a  walk,  putting  to  bed,  dosing  with  medi- 
cine, feeding  with  grass  or  lunch),  washing  dishes, 
washing  clothes,  ironing,  sweeping,  party  with  dishes, 
burial,  kindergarten,  school,  Christmas  tree,  loading 
wagons,  hauling  and  dumping,  driving  horse,  lasso- 
ing horses,  peddler,  pantry  with  sand  for  food,  hunt- 
ing wild  game,  punishment,  tomale  man,  bus,  rain- 
storm with  sand  for  rain.* 


•  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  46.  » Ibid. 

14 


176  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

The  disheartening  facts  forced  upon  us  as  we 
read  the  list  of  games  in  both  these  groups  are  the 
fatal  blindness  of  the  experimenting  kindergart- 
ners  to  the  meaning  of  imitation  and  their  cease- 
less surrender  to  the  momentary  caprices  of  little 
children. 

What  a  child  imitates  he  tends  to  become.  What 
ne  imitates  he  will  notice.  What  he  imitates  he 
begins  to  understand.  Blind  to  the  fact  that 
"  nothing  less  than  the  child's  personality  is  at 
stake  in  the  method  and  matter  of  his  imita- 
tions," the  free  play  revolutionizers  of  Froebelian 
games  are  perfectly  willing  to  have  children  trans- 
form themselves  into  sneaking  foxes  and  writhing 
rattlesnakes.  Ignoring  the  ,  reaction  of  imitation 
upon  selective  interest  they  eye  with  equal  favor 
the  representation  of  garden-planting,  or  human 
burial.  Aware  of  the  fragmentariness  of  child- 
ish thought  they  reject  Froebel's  wise  and  gentle 
plan  for  overcoming  it,  and  arrest  development 
by  really  encouraging  "  the  distorted  prominence 
of  isolated  factors  of  experience."  In  short, 
through  a  specific  application  of  the  fatal  heresy 
which  underlies  the  whole  free-play  programme, 
they  shift  upon  children  the  entire  responsibility 
of  selecting  what  they  will  represent  and  how  they 
will  represent  it.  By  this  act  of  abdication  they 
reduce  the  kindergarten  games  to  a  hotchpotch 
not  only  devoid  of  educational  value,  but  abso- 


THE  FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  177 

lutelj  perverting   in  its  reaction   upon   intellect, 
emotion,  and  will. 

The  attentive  reader  will  doubtless  have  ob- 
served that  in  the  representative  plays  described 
each  child  acted  as  an  isolated  individual,  and 
will  therefore  not  be  surprised  to  learn  that  our 
Santa  Barbara  experimenters  intentionally  dis- 
card circle  games.  The  reason  given  for  this  radi- 
cal change  is  that  the  individual  child  is  prior 
to  the  social  child,  and  that  traditional  games 
which  emphasize  the  group  as  opposed  to  the  in- 
dividual belong  to  the  period  between  seven  and 
twelve  years  of  age.  "  The  sacred  circle  of  kin- 
dergarten paraphernalia,  we  are  told,  does  not 
seem  to  be  based  on  any  natural  penchant  of  chil- 
dren of  kindergarten  age  for  the  traditional  circle 
games."  ^  The  argument  advanced  is  valid  only  if 
it  be  granted  that  education  should  never  lead  chil- 
dren to  do  anything  which  in  their  given  stage  of 
development  they  might  not  and  would  not  have 
done  of  themselves.  This  assumption  underlies 
the  whole  free-play  programme.  Its  clear  state- 
ment is  its  self-refutation.  It  has  been  shown 
that  both  in  biologic  and  social  recapitulation 
there  are  "  short  cuts "  from  lower  to  higher 
planes  of  development.  Why,  therefore,  should 
education  be  reproached  for  consciously  seeking 
short  cuts,  when  one  of  her  avowed  aims  is  to  help 
•  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  50. 


178  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  individual  to  recapitulate  within  the  span  of 
a  single  life  the  achievement  of  ages  ? 

The  kindergarten  games  mediate  between  the 
traditional  games  of  the  nursery  and  the  tradi- 
i/tional  games  of  the  playground.  Their  content 
is  borrowed  for  the  most  part  from  plays  anal- 
ogous to  Pat-a-Cake  and  Shoe  the  Horse,  which 
are  played  by  mothers  and  little  children  the 
world  over.  Their  form  is  borrowed  from  the 
traditional  ring  games  of  older  children.  They 
are,  therefore,  transitional  in  type,  and  may,  per- 
haps, be  best  described  as  a  repetition  by  many 
children  standing  on  a  circle  and  following  a 
leader  of  the  simple  movements  of  nursery  plays,* 
The  effort  of  the  Froebelian  kindergarten  is  to 
reenforce  in  fair  proportion  generic  or  ideal  modes 
of  self-expression.  Froebel  recognized  in  many 
traditional  games  the  deposit  of  unconscious  rea- 
son, preserved  what  was  good  in  this  deposit,  and 
omitted  its  objectionable  features;  supplied  miss- 
ing links,  and  presented  a  series  of  games  wherein 
each  is  related  to  all  the  others,  and  which,  by 
means  of  dramatic  and  graphic  representation, 
poetry  and  music  win  for  the  ideals  they  embody 
a   controlling    power   over   the    imagination.      In 

'  In  some  instances,  e.  g.,  the  farmer,  both  content  and  form 
are  borrowed  from  some  simpler  traditional  ring  game.  I 
agree  with  the  authors  of  the  Kindergarten  Problem  that  it  is  a 
mistake  to  introduce  complex  relationships  into  our  circle 
games. 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  179 

like  manner,  from  among  traditional  toys,  he 
picked  out  those  which  possessed  most  educative 
value,  ordered  them  into  related  series,  and  sug- 
gested a  method  by  which  they  might  be  con- 
sciously used  to  enrich,  interpret,  and  organize  the 
child's  experience,  develop  his  creative  power,  and 
awaken  in  him  a  selective  interest  which  would 
begin  the  process  of  his  deliverance  from  the  coer- 
cion of  heredity  and  environment.^  If  these  se- 
lected and  organized  games  and  gifts  have  no 
value,  then  the  traditional  kindergarten  has  no 
raison  d'etre.  But  if  Froebel  has  translated  the 
hieroglyphic  of  native  play  and  found  means 
which,  without  detriment  to  spontaneity,  influence 
the  growth  of  character  and  the  trend  of  thought, 
then  the  substitution  of  free  play  for  the  media- 
torial activity  of  the  kindergarten  with  its  prac- 
tical consequences  in  the  elimination  of  many 
Froebelian  instrumentalities  and  the  addition  of 
many  educationally  valueless  toys,  is  not  educa- 
tional progress  but  educational  atavism. 

The  gist  of  the  contention  between  the  free-play 
reformers  and  the  traditional  kindergarten  is, 
whether  the  immediate  interests  of  little  children 
are  a  sufficient  index  of  what  is  contributory  to 
their  development.  With  the  clear  statement  of 
the  point  at  issue  hesitation  between  the  opposing 
views  seems  impossible.     Who  does  not  know,  as 

'  See  Chapter  II  of  this  book. 


180  EDUCATIONAL-  ISSUES 

a  fact  of  familiar  experience,  that  many  things 
children  delight  in  doing  it  is  bad  for  them  to 
do;  that  many  sense-incentives  to  which  they  ea- 
gerly respond  corrupt  their  taste,  and  that,  since 
many  instinctive  forms  of  play  are  survivals  of 
an  out-grown  stage  of  human  progress,  undue  ac- 
cent upon  them  tends  to  arrest  development  at 
its  point  of  departure.  I  hope  I  shall  not  seem 
to  be  trifling  with  a  serious  subject  if  I  frankly 
confess  that  my  own  reaction  against  the  hue  and 
cry  for  recapitulation  of  feral  and  animal  ac- 
tivities is  best  expressed  in  the  words  of  Oliver 
Herford's  nursery  rhyme: 

Children,  behold  the  chimpanzee; 
He  sits  on  the  ancestral  tree 
From  which  we  sprang  in  ages  gone; — 
I'm  glad  we  sprang — had  we  held  on 
We  might,  for  all  that  I  can  say. 
Be  horrid  chimpanzees  to-day. 

In  their  attempts  to  revolutionize  the  kinder- 
garten games,  gifts,  and  occupations,  the  Santa 
Barbara  kindergartners  acted  under  the  spell  of 
false  conceptions  of  the  kindergarten,  of  the 
child,  and  of  the  nature  of  play.  Their  experi- 
ments in  story-telling  seem  to  have  been  conducted 
under  the  spell  of  psychologists  who  insisted  that 
the  chief  end  of  literature  was  to  create  sense-im- 
ages and  call  forth  motor  responses  thereto.     The 


THE  FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  181 

methods  inspired  by  this  psychologic  fallacy  are 

described  as  follows: 

) 
In  takihg  up  the  story  work  in  our  kindergarten 
this  year,  we  decided  to  try  with  the  entering  class 
of  children  from  four  to  five  years  old,  the  favorite 
rhymes  of  Mother  Goose.  We  took  up  at  first  the 
briefest  ones,  such  as: 


Or: 


"Rub-a-dub,  dub. 
Three  men  in  a  tub." 

"Jack,  be  nimble; 
Jack,  be  quick; 
Jack,  jump  over  the  candlestick." 

Oftentimes  we  acted  them  out  before  asking  the 
children  to  illustrate.  For  instance,  the  morning  I 
told  them  the  rhyme  of  "  Jack,  be  nimble,"  I  had  a 
candlestick  and  candle,  which  we  put  on  the  floor; 
then  we  suited  the  action  to  the  words,  each  child  who 
wished  going  through  the  jumping.  "  Seesaw,  Mar- 
gery Daw,"  was  given  the  first  time  with  little  suc- 
cess for  lack  of  illustration,  but  again  I  tried  it,  erect- 
ing a  miniature  seesaw  in  the  sand-box,  with  small 
dolls  on  either  end,  and,  when  given  the  charcoal  and 
paper,  the  results  were  astonishing;  each  child  had 
now  a  visual  picture  to  draw  from.  The  first  verse 
of  "  Jack  and  Jill "  was  successfully  illustrated  in  the 
sand-box,  with  a  hill  of  sand,  dolls,  little  tin  bucket, 
a  well  at  the  top  of  the  hill,  with  well-frame  of  sticks 
and  string  to  pull  up  the  bucket. 

"Ding-dong  bell. 
Pussy's  in  the  well," 


182  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

was  enjoyed  with  the  above  well,  and  a  picture  cat  to 
let  down  and  pull  out/  s. 

This  report  needs  no  comment.  The  theory 
that  the  one  end  and  aim  of  story-telling  is  to 
create  visual  images  will  always  call  forth  meth- 
ods which  chain  the  mind  to  sense-perception. 
Of  all  the  hobbies  that  have  perverted  the  prac- 
tice of  the  kindergarten,  the  hobby  of  the  visual 
image  has  had  perhaps  the  most  bal^uTinfluence. 
Its  results  have  been  both  comic  and  tragic.  One 
kindergartner  poured  a  bucket  of  water  along 
the  floor  of  her  kindergarten,  because  she  wished 
her  children  to  visualize  a  stream.  Numbers  of 
kindcrgartners  have  described  fairy  palaces  of 
marvelous  beauty  and  then  asked  children  to 
build  them  with  the  eight  cubes  of  the  third  gift. 
Nor  is  this  sin  against  imagination  confined  to 
the  kindergarten.  In  the  grammar  school  the 
myth  of  Persephone  has  been  shorn  of  its  beauty 
and  its  appeal  to  imagination  by  using  paper  dolls 
to  give  children  visual  images  of  Ceres,  Perseph- 
one, and  Pluto,  and  by  intertwining  yards  of 
black  paper  and  tinsel  to  represent  the  realm  of 
Hades.  In  the  Sunday  school  flaming  red  liquids 
made  colorless  by  chemicals  have  been  supposed 
to  recommend  to  innocent  childhood  such  curi- 
ously inappropriate  texts  as  "  Though  your  sins 

'  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  pp.  59,  60. 


THE   FREE-PLAY   PROGRAMME  183 

be  as  scarlet  they  shall  be  white  as  snow ;  "  jointed 
dolls,  pierced  with  arrows,  laid  upon  mimic  fires, 
and  crucified  upside  down  have  effectually  dis- 
tracted attention  from  all  that  is  most  valuable  in 
the  history  of  the  great  apostles  of  the  church,  and 
china  lambs  of  many  sizes,  but  of  common  stiff- 
ness and  imbecility  have  stifled  the  tender  and 
touching  appeal  of  Christ  as  the  lamb  of  God.  Is 
it  not  time  to  call  a  halt  to  the  experiments  of 
teachers  so  in  bondage  to  the  prosaic  understand- 
ing, and  to  point  out  clearly  the  errors  of  those 
psychologists  who  value  literature  chiefly  as  an 
instrument  for  creating  mental  images,  and  one  of 
whom  hesitates  not  to  ascribe  Shakespeare's  su- 
premacy to  the  facts  that  he  had  magnificent  sen- 
sory training,  made  the  proper  motor  responses 
thereto,  and  was  blessed  with  parents  who  could 
neither  read  nor  write? 

Having  revolutionized  the  kindergarten  games, 
gifts,  and  occupations,  and  destroyed  story-telling 
as  a  simple  art,  the  Santa  Barbara  experimenters 
devote  their  final  attention  to  kindergarten  draw- 
ing, which  they  insist  should  take  exclusively  the 
form  of  picture-writing,  should  be  preceded  by 
dramatic  representation,  and  should  begin  with 
blackboard  exercises  which  demand  large,  free-arm 
movements.  "  Education,"  we  are  told,  "  has  been 
and  is  burdened  by  a  hapless  confusion  between 
drawing  as  an  art  and  drawing  in  a  more  primi- 


184  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

tive  stage  of  its  evolution,  found  alike  in  the 
child  and  in  primitive  man — drawing  merely  as 
a  way  of  telling  something."  * 

It  should  be  frankly  admitted  that  by  its  neg- 
lect of  picture-writing,  and  its  exaggerated  em- 
phasis upon  type  forms  and  conventional  design, 
the  traditional  kindergarten  laid  itself  open  to 
the  criticism  of  the  child-study  reformers.^  But 
when  the  reformers  fell  into  the  error  of  entirely 
repudiating  design,  they  overlooked  a  tendency 
abundantly  illustrated  in  the  products  of  primi- 
tive peoples  and  repeated  in  the  love  of  all  little 
children  for  arrangement  games.  Had  this  act 
of  repudiation  been  confined  to  drawing,  its  re- 
sults, though  regrettable,  would  not  have  been  so 
disastrous  as  they  have  actually  proved  themselves 
to  be.  It  is  because  it  was  extended  so  as  to  at- 
tack forms  of  beauty  with  blocks,  tablets,  sticks, 
rings,  and  lentils,  to  make  all  gift  exercises  illus- 
trative, and  to  eliminate  design  from  the  kinder- 
garten occupations  that  its  influence  has  been  so 

>  The  Kindergarten  Problem,  p.  57. 

'  In  the  Mother  Play,  The  Education  of  Man,  and  The 
Pedagogics  of  the  Kindergarten,  Froebel  makes  many  sug- 
gestions with  regard  to  ways  and  means  of  developing  the 
power  of  graphic  representation  of  concrete  objects.  These 
suggestions  were  too  much  neglected  by  his  followers.  See 
in  The  Mother  Play  the  Commentary  on  the  Little  Artist. 
See  also  The  Education  of  Man,  pp.  75-79;  and  Education  by 
Development,  pp.  62-68. 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  185 

subversive,  and  that  it  has  called  forth  such  an 
active  protest  from  Froebelian  kindergartners.^ 

In  the  earlier  part  of  this  chapter  I  called  at- 
tention to  the  two  great  fallacies  which  created 
the  free-play  movement.  I  have  tried  to  suggest 
the  results  of  these  fallacies  through  consideration 

>  The  exhibit  of  children's  work  made  in  New  York  during 
the  fourteenth  annual  convention  of  the  International  Kinder- 
garten Union  (April  22  to  May  3,  1907),  proved  beyond  dis- 
pute, that  through  the  craze  for  illustration  combined  with 
the  idea  that  immediate  environment  should  determine  the 
subjects  illustrated,  too  many  kindergartens  had  become 
instruments  for  arresting  the  intellect  and  brutalizing  the 
taste  of  little  children.  What  influence  except  for  evil  can 
it  have  upon  a  child  to  make  a  cardboard  model  of  the  ugly 
tenement  house  in  which  he  lives,  and  to  make  his  copy,  if 
possible,  uglier  than  the  original?  Wherein  lies  the  educa- 
tional value  of  paj>er  articles  of  clothing  badly  cut  and  strung 
from  roof  to  roof  in  copy  of  the  laundry  methods  of  the 
slums?  What  liberating  influence  is  exercised  upon  im- 
agination by  a  faulty  reproduction  of  the  garbage  man  and 
his  cart?  In  short,  why  do  ugly  work  in  order  to  rivet  atten- 
tion upon  deplorable  surroundings? 

A  second  fact  proved  by  the  exhibit,  was  that  the  mania  for 
illustration  had  caused  many  kindergartners  to  discard 
traditional  materials  in  favor  of  tissue  paper,  clothes  pins, 
strings,  cracker  boxes,  and  paper  men  and  animals  badly 
drawn  and  colored.  The  leaves  and  flowers  made  of  tissue 
paper  and  used  for  stringing  were  an  offense  to  nature  and 
an  insult  to  taste.  It  is  no  argument  to  say  that  we  must 
meet  children  on  their  own  plane.  Upon  every  plane  of 
development  something  may  be  done  to  increase  efficiency 
and  refine  sensibility.  To  help  children  to  make  uglier  things 
than  they  could  possibly  have  done  without  adult  misguid- 
ance is  a  caricature  of  education. 


186  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

of  the  general  programme;  the  new  methods  pro- 
posed for  gift  and  occupation  exercises,  the  em- 
phasis upon  mere  movement  games,  the  additions 
suggested  to  the  instrumentalities  of  Froebel,  and 
the  devices  thought  necessary  in  order  that  the 
simplest  rhymes  might  penetrate  the  dense  minds 
of  little  children.  My  aim  has  been  to  prove  that 
whereas  the  free-play  programme  claims  to  be 
the  only  rational  solution  to  Froebel's  plea  for 
"  self-activity,"  it  is  the  one  programme  which 
most  effectually  discourages  self-activity.  By  its 
preference  for  the  fundamental  movements  of 
hypothetical  tree-dwelling  ancestors,  it  prevents 
tiiat  development  of  hand  and  fingers  which  made 
the  Froebelian  kindergarten  a  transition  toward 
the  manual  training  school ;  by  its  insistence  upon 
the  visual  image,  its  neglect  of  symbolism,  its  dis- 
traction of  attention  through  a  mixed  multiplicity 
of  toys,  and  its  refusal  to  advance  from  isolated 
facts  through  serial  connection  to  causal  agency, 
it  arrests  intelligence  upon  the  lowest  plane  of 
sense-perception.  Worst  of  all,  by  its  ceaseless 
surrender  to  the  whim  of  the  moment,  it  kills  the 
will  which  is  struggling  to  be  born  out  of  feeling 
and  desire.  Its  methods,  one  and  all,  are  a  refut- 
ing commentary,  which  he  who  runs  may  read, 
upon  its  major  proposition,  that  "  the  kindergarten 
is  a  substitute  for  childish  play  in  its  totality,"  ^ 
» Dr.  Harris. 


THE  FREE>-PLAY  PROGRAMME  187 

and  its  minor  proposition  that  play  itself  can 
be  adequately  defined  as  ancestral  impulses 
called  into  activity  by  the  solicitations  of  en- 
vironment. 

It  will  doubtless  be  objected  to  my.  discussion 
of  the  free-play  programme  that  the  type  of  kin- 
dergarten described  has  no  actual  existence,  and 
that  there  is  not  a  single  kindergartner  in  Amer- 
ica who  unequivocally  accepts  the  ideal  of  free 
play  as  a  criterion  by  which  to  determine  her 
practice.  The  objection  is  at  once  valid  and  mis- 
leading. Doubtless  the  dialectic  of  experience  has 
already  practically  refuted  the  wholesale  fallacy 
of  free  play,  and  the  Santa  Barbara  experiment 
will  never  be  repeated.  On  the  other  hand,  many 
practices  which  sprang  into  being  during  the  brief 
authority  of  the  child-study  movement  persist  in 
detached  kindergartens,  and  few  kindergartners 
have  so  consciously  interpreted  the  argument  from 
experience  as  to  be  wholly  free  from  danger  of 
perversion.  The  necessity  of  the  hour  is  that  is- 
sues should  be  sharply  defined,  frankly  stated,  and 
fairly  met.  Granting  therefore  that  no  single 
kindergarten  is  exclusively  dominated  by  the  fal- 
lacy of  free  play,  I  maintain  that  the  influence  of 
this  conception  is  still  traceable  in  a  tendency  to 
increase  unduly  the  number  of  running,  skipping, 
hopping,  catching,  throwing,  and  climbing  games; 
in  an  unwise  attempt  to  concentrate  interest  upon 


188  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

animals;  in  sporadic  efforts  to  introduce  into 
"^  the  kindergarten  toys  devoid  of  educational  value; 
in  reversions  to  street  games;  in  the  tendency  to 
discard  or  minimize  all  the  traditional  material 
of  the  kindergarten,  except  blocks,  sand,  clay, 
scissors,  pencils,  paper,  brushes,  and  paint;  in  the 
elimination  of  exercises  relating  to  the  organization 
as  opposed  to  the  unselective  reproduction  of  ex- 
perience ;  in  methods  of  story-telling  which  enslave 
the  mind  to  the  mental  image;  in  the  repudiation 
of  symbolism  as  the  characteristic  form  of  mental 
activity  between  the  ages  of  three  and  six  years, 
and  in  a  seeming  total  blindness  to  the  fact  that 
^  while  art  is  allied  to  play  through  its  freedom  and 
spontaneity,  it  develops  from  the  beginning  imder 
the  Influence  of  that  principle  of  order  whose  ini- 
tial manifestations  are  rhythm,  measure,  and  pro- 
portion. ^ 

The  merit  of  the  kindergarten,  as  that  institu- 
tion was  conceived  by  its  founder,  is  that,  recog- 
nizing the  values  of  life  as  approximate  defini- 
tions of  the  structure  of  mind,  it  is  able  both 
to  root  education  in  spontaneous  activities,  and 
to  guide  it  toward  rational  issues.  The  defects 
of  the  concentric  programme  arise  from  the  fact 
that  while  recognizing  the  values  of  life  it  imposes 
them  from  without  instead  of  developing  them 
from  within  the  child.  The  irony  of  the  free-play 
'  See  Chapter  II,  pp.  49-52. 


THE  FREE-PLAY  PROGRAMME  189 

programme  is  that  by  ignoring  the  values  of  life 
and  tacitly  denying  to  mind  any  true  self -activity, 
it  presents  the  anomaly  of  an  educational  method 
which  lacks  both  a  subject  matter  of  education 
and  a  person  to  be  educated. 


CHAPTEE   VII 

THE    INDIVIDUAL    AND    THE    RACE 

The  self-refuting  practice  of  free-play  kinder- 
gartens cannot  be  fully  appreciated  until  it  is  set 
in  the  context  of  that  general  demand  for  a  new 
return  to  nature,  of  which  it  is  one  of  the  minor 
expressions.  The  most  ardent  champion  of  this 
contemporary  Rousseauism  is  Dr.  G.  Stanley  Hall, 
and  a  lucid  statement  of  its  main  tenets  is  con- 
tained in  the  following  passage  of  his  book  on 
Adolescence : 

Rousseau  would  leave  pre-pubescent  years  to  na- 
ture and  to  the  primal  hereditary  impulsions,  and 
allow  the  fundamental  traits  of  savagery  their  fling 
until  twelve.  Biological  psychology  finds  many  and 
cogent  reasons  to  confirm  this  view  if  only  a  proper 
environment  could  be  provided.  The  child  revels  in 
savagery,  and  if  its  tribal,  predatory,  hunting,  fishing, 
fighting,  roving,  idle,  playing  proclivities  could  be  in- 
dulged in  the  country  and  under  conditions  that  now, 
alas!  seem  hopelessly  ideal,  they  could  conceivably  be 
so  organized  and  directed  as  to  be  far  more  truly  hu- 
manistic and  liberal  than  all  that  the  best  modem 
school  can  provide.  Rudimentary  organs  of  the  soul 
190 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE   RACE         191 

now  suppressed,  perverted,  or  delayed,  to  crop  out  later 
in  menacing  forms,  would  be  developed  in  their  sea- 
son so  that  we  should  be  immune  to  them  in  maturer 
years,  on  the  principle  of  the  Aristotelian  catharsis 
for  which  I  have  tried  to  suggest  a  broader  applica- 
tion than  the  Stagirite  could  see  in  his  day.' 

The  demand  for  a  new  return  to  nature  presup- 
poses a  strict  parallel  between  the  development  of 
the  individual  and  that  of  the  race,  and  puts  an 
arresting  emphasis  upon  the  rehearsal  of  savage 
and  pre-human  activities.^  Biologists  and  com- 
parative psychologists  insist  that  the  individual 
human  organism  and  the  individual  human  mind 
go  through  stages  which  recapitulate  the  history 
of  the  animal  world  in  its  ascent  toward  man. 
Anthropologists  claim  that  in  the  development 
of  each  human  individual  the  great  culture  epochs 
of  history  must  be  repeated.  The  tendency  of  any 
mind  to  dwell  too  fondly  upon  biologic  recapitu- 
lation obscures  its  vision  of  historic   recapitula- 

>  Adolescence,  G.  Stanley  Hall,  preface  to  vol.  i,  pp.  x-xi. 
Has  not  Dr.  Hall  perverted  the  Aristotelian  catharsis  rather 
than  given  it  broader  application?  Aristotle  uses  the  term  to 
explain  the  influence  of  the  tragic  drama  and  suggests  that  it 
purifies  the  soul  through  a  vicarious  experience  of  the  out- 
come of  evil  passions.  It  would  seem  that  his  idea  is  pre- 
cisely to  save  the  individual  from  that  free  fling  of  impulse 
which  Dr.  Hail  thinks  indispensable  to  the  growth  of  moral 
character.  • 
•  *  E.  g.,  the  actiAnties  of  man's  hypothetical  tree-dwelling 

ancestors. 

15 


192  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

tion,  and  creates  theories  which,  when  applied  in 
education  yield  fatal  results.  To  this  class  of 
theories  belongs  that  conception  of  play,  as  "  the 
motor  habits  of  the  past  persisting  in  the  present," 
which  explains  the  practical  paradox  that  in  free- 
play  kindergartens  there  is  no  freedom.  To  the 
same  class  belongs  the  theory  that  the  fundamen- 
tal traits  of  savagery  should  have  free  fling  until 
the  age  of  twelve  years.  A  being  who  must  re- 
hearse in  the  short  span  of  an  individual  life  the 
culture  stages  of  history  may  not  give  so  much 
time  to  the  recapitulation  of  feral  and  brute  ac- 
tivities. 

Disciples  of  the  new  return  to  nature  have 
failed  to  adjust  the  rival  claims  of  biologic  and 
historic  recapitulation.  They  have  also  given 
scant  attention  to  many  questions  involved  in  the 
general  conception  of  a  parallel  between  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race. 
Is  it  true  that  each  stage  of  the  process  of  de- 
velopment is  a  direct  outcome  of  its  next  inferior, 
and  a  necessary  transition  toward  its  next  supe- 
rior? Must  the  individual  live  through  experi- 
ences which  the  race  has  outlived  ?  Were  all  these 
outlived  experiences  necessary  phases  of  phylo- 
genetic  development,  or  may  it  be  that  in  some 
of  them,  at  least,  humanity  strayed  from  the  path 
of  progress?  Has  mankind  achieved  such  good- 
ness and  wisdom  as  it  possesses  by  following  na- 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE   RACE         193 

ture  or  by  warring  against  nature?  If  it  made 
war  against  nature  where  did  it  get  the  ideal 
which  incited  the  war? 

The  answers  to  these  several  questions  may  be 
most  easily  approached  by  considering  the  method 
of  moral  education  defended  by  advocates  of  the 
new  return  to  nature.  This  method  has  been 
boldly  formulated  by  Dr.  Hall,  who  insists  "  that 
a  boy  of  twelve  years  of  age  should  have  been 
through  most  forms  of  what  parents  and  teachers 
commonly  call  badness.  .  .  .  He  should  have 
fought,  whipped  and  been  whipped,  used  language 
offensive  to  the  prude  and  the  prim  precisian; 
been  in  some  scrapes ;  had  something  to  do  with 
bad,  if  more  with  good  associates,  and  been  ex- 
posed to  and  already  recovering  from  as  many 
forms  of  ethical  mumps  and  measles,  as  by  hav- 
ing in  mild  form  now,  he  can  be  rendered  im- 
mune to  later."  ^  This  statement  clearly  implies 
^^hat  the  only  way  of  getting  rid  of  badness  is  by 
being  a  little  bad.  It  is  a  serious  proposal  to  sow 
wild  oats,  and  akin  to  the  idea  that  it  is  necessary 
for  youth  to  paint  the  town  red.  The  conviction 
in  which  it  is  grounded  would  seem  to  be  that 
every  native  instinct  subserves  some  good  pur- 
pose, and  has  a  sphere  of  legitimate  exercise.  It 
may  be  that  some  instincts  have  only  a  transitory 
value,  and  that  in  the  development  of  man's  moral 

«  Adolescence,  vol.  ii,  p.  452. 


194  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

nature  their  role  is  analogous  to  that  of  the  tad- 
pole's tail  in  the  development  of  the  frog's  legs. 
Thej  "  exercise  atavistic  functions  which  will 
abort  before  maturity,"  but  in  and  through  such 
exercise  they  stimulate  virtues  which  otherwise 
would  never  arise.  Hence,  "  Give  nature  her 
fling,"  and  by  letting  children  act  as  they  are, 
insure  that  they  shall  become  what  they  ought 
to  be. 

I  look  over  the  lists  of  our  native  instincts  and 
emotions  given  in  contemporary  psychologies,  and 
find  among  them  deceitfulness,  jealousy,  terror, 
rage  and  cruelty.  Has  deceitfulness  a  root  of 
blessing  ?  Has  jealousy  "  a  soul  of  goodness  " 
would  we  observingly  distill  it  out?  Are  we  to 
conquer  courage  by  surrender  to  blind  terror,  win 
sweet  serenity  by  indulging  in  rage,  and  achieve 
loving-kindness  by  giving  free  fling  to  our  native 
cruelty  ?  And  if  in  these  cases,  at  least,  virtue 
is  attained  not  by  self-indulgence  but  by  self-con- 
quest, may  it  not  be  well  to  consider  whether  the 
only  way  that  man  can  make  himself  what  he 
ought  to  be  is  by  unmaking  himself  as  he  is  ?  * 
Any  considerate  survey  of  our  "  feeling  in- 
stincts "  will  at  least  convince  us  that  while  nature 

'  The  reader  must  distinguish  between  rage  and  anger, 
terror  and  fear.  There  is  a  wise  fear  and  possibly  a  righteous 
anger.  There  can  never  be  a  wise  terror  or  a  righteous  rage. 
See  the  chart  of  man's  native  emotions  prefixed  to  Mental 
Evolution  in  Man,  by  George  John  Romanes. 


^ 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE   RACE        195 

supplies  many  of  the  materials  out  of  which 
we  build  our  house  of  life,  she  has  also  left  in 
us  some  rubbish  heaps — debris  of  her  own  past 
building,  which  the  human  builder  must  throw 

away.  .9aJ^ 

Turning  from  this  cWsory glance  at  our  native 
instincts  to  the  process  of  moral  education  as  car- 
ried out  in  history,  we  become  aware  that  men 
ave  not  grown  better  by  permitting  themselves 
to  be  a  little  bad,  but  that  always  and  everywhere 
virtue  has  been  achieved  by  the  exercise  of  self- 
restraint.  It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to 
recall  the  statement  of  Lecky,  that  "  the  first  form 
of  human  virtue  is  the  courageous  endurance  of 
suffering,  this  being  the  one  conspicuous  instance 
in  early  savage  life  of  a  course  of  conduct  op- 
posed to  natural  impulses,  and  pursued  through  a 
belief  that  it  is  higher  and  nobler  than  its  oppo- 
site." ^  The  first  books  of  ethics  were  written  by 
slaves,  and  Hegel  explains  their  authorship  by 
the  fact  that  being  forced  to  do  what  masters 
commanded  slaves  were  subjected  to  a  discipline 
which  lifted  them  out  of  servitude  to  their  own 
appetites  and  passions.  Prohibitory  laws  pre- 
cede mandatory  laws.  Confucius  teaches  the 
golden  rule  in  a  negative  form.  The  aim  of  all 
the    ceremonies    of    Zoroastrianism    is    to    expel 

>  Cited  in  Love  and  Law  in  Child  Training,  Emilia  Poulsson, 
p.  143. 


196  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

evil.  The  cardinal  virtues  of  paganism — justice, 
prudence,  temperance,  fortitude — are  virtues  of 
self-restraint.  Most  of  the  Ten  Commandments 
declare  what  man  must  not  do.  It  would  seem, 
therefore,  that  the  doctrine  of  historic  recapitu- 
lation calls  rather  for  the  inhibition  than  the 
indulgence  of  idle,  predatory,  and  fighting 
proclivities,  and  discourages  the  idea  that  char- 
acter is  formed  by  giving  free  fling  to  natural 
impulse. 

The  method  of  laissez-aller,  characteristic  alike 
of  original  and  contemporary  Rousseauism  not 
only  arrests  the  parallel  between  the  development 
of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race,  at  its  his- 
toric point  of  departure,  but  also  directly  antago- 
nizes the  doctrine  of  psychology,  with  regard  to 
the  function  of  inhibition.  In  a  striking  passage 
of  his  Larger  Psychology,  Professor  James  de- 
clares that  "  we  should  all  be  cataleptics  and  never 
stop  a  muscular  contraction  once  begun  were  it  not 
that  other  processes  simultaneously  going  on  in- 
hibit the  contraction."  ^  In  his  very  illuminating 
discussion  of  deliberate  suggestion,  Professor 
Baldwin  describes  that  form  of  inhibition  in  which 
"  coordinate  sense-stimuli  meet,  confront,  oppose, 
and  further  one  another,"  and  shows  that  this  ten- 
sion of  opposing  incentives  is  a  necessary  requi- 

>  Larger  Psychology,  vol.  ii,  p.  583. 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE   RACE         197 

site  to  the  rise  of  volition.^  Professor  Koyce  tells 
us  that  "  all  higher  intellectual  processes  are  ac- 
companied by  processes  in  the  cortex  which  appear 
when  seen  from  without  enormously  inhibitory," 
and  insists  that  "  upon  the  presence  of  inhibition 
— i.  e.,  of  the  prevention  or  overcoming  of  one 
form  of  nervous  excitement  by  the  very  fact  of  the 
presence  of  another,  the  organization  of  all  our 
higher  life  depends.  What,  in  any  situation  we 
are  restrained  from  doing,  is  as  important  to  us 
as  what  we  do."  ^  The  least  degree  of  conscious 
introspection  will  make  any  adult  aware  that  ten- 
sion is  indispensable  to  his  intellectual  and  moral 
life.  Psychology,  therefore,  recnforces  the  lesson 
of  history,  and  confirms  the  insight  that  "  only 
with  renunciation  can  life,  properly  speaking,  be 
said  to  begin." 

The  thoughts  I  have  been  suggesting  are  obvi- 
ous and  commonplace.  Their  very  general  recog- 
nition almost  immediately  undermined  the  influ- 
ence of  the  Neo-Rousseau  gospel.  Its  golden 
rule,  "  Give  nature  her  fling,"  made  way  for  the 
precept,  "  Substitute  acquired  for  native  reac- 
tions," and  the  emphasis  of  education  was  placed 
upon  "  the  organization  of  habits  of  conduct  and 
tendencies  to  behavior."  ^    In  the  attempt  to  form 

>  Mental  Development,  James  Mark  Baldwin,  pp.  126-30, 
and  p.  372. 

2  Outlines  of  Psychology,  Josiah  Royce,  pp.  .71-73. 
» Talks  to  Teachers,  William  James,  p.  29. 


198  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

good  habits,  however,  appeal  was  often  made  to 
bad  motives,  and  thus  a  fatal  schism  was  intro- 
duced into  the  moral  life.  The  ground  for  this 
divorce  between  motive  and  act  is  suggested  in  the 
following  statement,  which  I  quote  from  Teachers' 
College  Record  for  November,  1903: 

It  is  a  folly  of  both  the  sentimentalist  and  the 
ultra-rational  thinker  to  insist  that  children  should 
not  only  think  and  act  rightly,  but  also  from  the  right 
motives;  that  to  tell  the  truth  to  avoid  a  beating  is 
no  better  than  to  tell  a  lie.  For  a  mature,  responsible 
person,  this  may  be  true,  so  far  as  goodness  and  bad- 
ness mean  respectively  things  worthy  of  merit  and 
things  worthy  of  blame — and  so  far  as  telling  the 
truth  to  avoid  a  beating  forms  precisely  that  habit. 
But  with  most  school  children,  certainly  with  kin- 
dergarten children,  telling  the  truth  to  avoid  a  beat- 
ing will  form  the  habit  of  telling  the  truth  in  general, 
the  memory  of  the  original  motive  fading  away,  into 
obscurity,  while  the  actual  habit  of  performance  re- 
mains. For  a  college  student  to  study  to  win  a  large 
salary  is  perhaps  no  better  than  idleness ;  for  a  gen- 
tleman to  be  honest  because  honesty  is  the  best  pol- 
icy is  perhaps  no  better  than  to  be  dishonest.  But 
for  the  kindergarten  child  the  important  thing  is  that 
V  it  should  be  obedient,  generous,  cheerful,  courageous, 
and  kind,  the  reason  why  being  a  matter  that  will, 
with  proper  treatment,  die  out  from  the  habit  and 
leave  it  as  a  general  tendency.  We  all  have  to  begin 
with  the  so-called  lower  motives,  and  can  hardly  be 
expected  to  have  sloughed  them  off  by  the  fourth  year 
of  life.  It  is  the  good  fortune  of  moral  training  that 
the  lapse  of  time   so   often  preserves  a  good  habit. 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE   RACE         199 

while  allowing  the  feeling  of  its  source  to  die  out  from 
consciousness.' 


The  point  of  this  statement  is  that  right  action 
may  be  divorced  from  right  motive,  and  this  is 
a  denial  of  the  truth  that  the  motive  which  in- 
spires an  act  gives  its  quality  to  the  act  itself. 
It  is  explicitly  affirmed  that  "  we  all  have  to 
begin  with  the  so-called  lower  motives."  The  rea- 
son given  by  contemporary  child-students  for  this 
assumed  necessity  of  acting  from  lower  motives  is 
the  dominance  in  childhood  of  "  the  individual- 
istic instinct."  In  his  Fundamentals  of  Child 
Study,"  for  example,  Mr.  Kirkpatrick  makes  the 
following  statements: 

The  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  not  only  the 
oldest  instinct,  but  one  that  has  been  most  uniformly 
useful  to  all  species  from  the  earliest  beginnings  of 
animal  life,  hence  we  should  expect  it  to  be  strong  in 
the  young  child.  There  is,  however,  a  still  more  im- 
portant reason  for  expecting  it  to  be  strong  in  the 
young  of  all  animals  including  man,  viz.,  because  it 
is  the  only  instinct  that  can  be  of  any  use  in  this 
stage  of  early  helplessness.  Any  tendency  on  the  part 
of  a  young  animal  or  child  to  act  for  the  good  of  any 
other  being  than  itself,  would  be  futile  and  in  many 
cases  injurious  to  itself  and  indirectly  to  its  species; 

•  The  Philosophy  and  Psychology  of  the  Kindergarten, 
Teachers'  College  Record,  November,  1903,  pp.  59,  60. 
(Italics  mine.) 


200  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

hence  the  individualistic  instinct  must  be  dominant 
in  the  young  of  all  species  that  survive/ 

This  passage  assures  us  that  as  a  result  of  the 
total  process  of  evolution  the  individualistic  in- 
stinct is  exclusively  dominant  in  childhood.  In 
the  following  statements  we  are  apprised  how  it 
functions  in  the  child  of  kindergarten  age: 

The  chief  motive  of  life  is  to  get  everything  pos- 
sible for  himself,  objects,  sensations,  knowledge,  privi- 
leges, and  honors.  ...  To  be  thoughtful  of  the  in- 
terests of  others,  or  to  be  interested  in  anything  not 
concerned  with  the  advancement  of  this  kingdom  of 
his,  would  be  to  be  something  other  than  a  healthy, 
normal  child.' 

In  general,  the  question  which  the  child  mentally 
asks  of  every  object  and  every  person  is :  "  What  are 
they  good  for  ?  "  meaning  by  good,  "  What  can  I  get 
out  of  them  ? "  He  is  the  center  of  the  universe,  and 
everything  and  everybody  is  for  his  pleasure.'  .  .  . 
Upon  this  rock  of  truth  must  be  based  any  sound 
method  of  moral  education.  "  Good  moral  training 
will  lead  the  child  to  discover  that  he  can  get  most  for 
himself  in  the  long  run  by  being  kind  to  others,  be- 
cause of  the  return  favors,  rewards,  and  approbation 
thus  gained."  * 

The  mind  is  a  cautious  investor  that  withdraws  its 
capital  when  it  ceases  to  pay  dividends  of  personal 
satisfaction.     All  our  means  and  methods  must  in  the 

«  Fundamentals  of  Child  Study,  pp.  92,  93. 

» Ibid.,  pp.  95,  96.  » Ibid.,  p.  95. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  98. 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE        201 

last  analysis  be  arrangements  for  making  the  good 
thoughts  and  acts  of  profit,  and  the  bad  thoughts  and 
acts  of  disadvantage  to  the  personal  cravings  of  those 
educated/ 


Summarizing  the  statements  cited  we  may  say 
that  they  contain  a  diagnosis  of  the  child's  state 
of  mind  and  a  theory  of  moral  education  based 
upon  this  diagnosis.  The  child  is  declared  to  be 
wholly  selfish  and  thinking  only  of  what  pays. 
The  method  of  education  proposed  is  to  foster 
right  action  by  showing  that  it  pays,  and  to  re- 
strain wrong  action  by  proving  that  it  does  not 
pay.  It  is  claimed  that  notwithstanding  the  con- 
stant appeal  to  selfish  motives  they  will  disappear 
with  age.  This,  however,  is  an  assertion  without 
proof. 

The  validity  of  the  method  proposed  depends 
upon  the  correctness  of  the  diagnosis.  If  little 
children  are  really  devoid  of  altruistic  emotion, 
there  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  make  virtue  pay.  In 
this  case,  however,  we  substitute  expediency  for 
virtue,  and  should  frankly  recognize  what  we  have 
done.  "  Kant,"  says  Mr.  Balfour,  "  compared  the 
moral  law  to  the  starry  heavens,  and  found  both 
sublime.  On  the  naturalistic  hypothesis  it  would 
be  more  appropriate  to  compare  it  to  the  protec- 
tive blotches  on  the  beetle's  back  and  find  both  in- 

'  Philosophy  and  Psychology  of  the  Kindergarten,  p.  56. 


202  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

genious."  We  accept  adaptive  ingenuity  in  lieu 
of  morality  when  we  seek  to  make  children  good 
by  making  goodness  profitable. 

Before  acquiescing  in  such  a  radical  substitu- 
tion we  should  be  very  sure  of  the  fact  that  in  little 
children  love  and  sympathy  are  emotions  unborn. 
Romanes  claims  that  social  feelings  stir  in  babies 
ten  weeks  old ;  that  affection  appears  in  babies  of 
fourteen  weeks,  and  that  sympathy  is  alive  and 
active  in  the  child  of  five  months.  Most  reputable 
psychologists  recognize  the  presence  of  organic 
sympathy  in  very  young  children.  The  method 
of  making  virtue  pay  rests  upon  a  hypothesis  of 
more  than  doubtful  authority.* 

Waiving  the  doubts  which  arise  in  our  minds  as 
we  consider  the  psychologic  reasons  given  for  ap- 
peals to  expediency,  we  may  cordially  admit  that 
the  effort  to  form  right  habits  through  rewards 
and  punishments  which  provoke  the  conviction  that 
virtue  pays,  finds  many  parallels  in  the  course  of 
human  history.  The  fear  of  the  Lord  has  been 
very  generally  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  The 
history  of  the  Hebrew  people  is  a  typical  one,  and 
the  Old  Testament  is  one  long  record  of  "  arrange- 
ments for  making  good  acts  of  profit  and  bad  acts 
of  disadvantage  to  the  cravings  of  the  race  whose 
education  it  describes."     Over  the  heads  of  the 

>  See  also  Professor  Baldwin's  Social  and  Ethical  Interpreta- 
tions, Chapter  VI,  "Instincts  and  Emotions." 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND  THE   RACE        203 

chosen  people  hung  constantly  the  dread  of  burn- 
ings, ague,  pestilence,  seed  sown  in  vain,  wasted 
cities,  desolated  sanctuaries,  and  deliverance  into 
the  hands  of  national  enemies.  On  the  other 
hand,  long  life,  prosperity,  and  posterity  were 
assured  to  all  those  who  obeyed  the  divine  com- 
mands, and  devout  Hebrews  stayed  their  hearts 
upon  promises  of  blessing  for  themselves  and  their 
descendants.  The  doctrines  of  heaven  and  hell  as 
taught  in  the  historic  churches  of  Christendom  are 
the  climax  of  an  educational  effort  to  inhibit 
wrong  action  and  incite  right  action  by  appeal  to 
individualistic  motives.  For  the  righteous  is  pre- 
pared a  heavenly  city,  with  streets  of  gold  and 
gates  of  pearl ;  for  the  wicked  yawns  the  pit  burn- 
ing with  fire  and  brimstone,  where  there  shall  be 
weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth. 

As  I  ponder  the  contrasting  plans  of  moral  edu- 
cation proposed  by  the  advocates  of  a  new  re- 
turn to  nature  and  a  new  war  against  nature, 
both  and  neither  seem  justified  in  appealing  for 
support  of  their  practice  to  the  history  of  the  race. 
The  former  may  urge  with  truth  that  men  found 
out  what  was  right  only  through  a  long  course 
of  experiment  in  wrong;  the  latter  may  claim 
without  fear  of  contradiction  that  not  by  the  broad 
path  of  self-indulgence  but  by  the  straight  and 
narrow  path  of  self-restraint,  has  man  climbed  to 
such  moral  eminence  as  he  has  thus  far  attained. 


204  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

The  admission  of  both  claims  destroys  the  author- 
ity of  either.  The  fact  that  when,  through  experi- 
ment, any  right  course  of  conduct  had  been  dis- 
covered, it  was  immediately  enforced,  shows  that 
history  can  change  its  method.  If  it  has  changed 
once,  it  may  have  changed  more  than  once. 
Therefore  the  next  question  we  must  consider  is 
whether  there  has  been  anywhere  a  second  historic 
revolution  in  the  method  of  moral  education,  and 
whether  the  result  of  this  revolution  has  been  to 
set  aside  both  the  precept  "  Give  nature  her  fling  " 
and  the  maxim,  "  Make  virtue  pay." 

Anyone  who  has  critically  and  devoutly  stud- 
ied the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  must  be  aware  that 
it  initiates  just  such  a  revolution  as  I  have  de- 
scribed. It  is  confessedly  a  revolutionary  procla- 
mation, and,  as  Bishop  Brooks  has  pointed  out, 
embodies  a  series  of  protests  against  the  insuf- 
ficiency of  existing  laws.  "  Men  say,  '  You  shall 
not  kill ' ;  I  say,  you  shall  not  hate.  Men  say, 
'  You  shall  not  commit  adultery  ' ;  I  say,  you  shall 
not  lust.  Men  say,  '  You  shall  not  swear  falsely  ' ; 
I  say,  you  shall  not  swear  at  all.  Men  say,  '  You 
shall  love  your  friends ' ;  I  say,  you  shall  love 
everybody."  ^  Power  to  obey  these  revolutionary 
commands  is  liberated  by  a  revolutionizing  mo- 
tive. Jehovah  is  not  God,  and  in  his  stead  is  a 
loving  Father  who  maketh  His  sun  to  shine  on  the 

•  Seeking  Life,  Phillips  Brooks,  p.  225. 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE        205 

evil  and  the  good,  and  sendeth  rain  on  the  just  and 
the  unjust.  All  men  are  sons  of  the  one  Father, 
and  therefore  partakers  of  His  nature.  They 
must  live  worthily  of  their  divine  heredity. 
Finally,  they  are  able  to  appreciate  the  perfect 
love  of  God  through  the  germinal  love  in  their 
own  hearts.  For  they,  too,  are  fathers,  though 
imperfect  ones,  and  being  evil  yet  know  how  to 
give  good  gifts  to  their  children. 

Many  persons  go  through  life  without  disen- 
tangling the  relationship  between  ideals  and  emo- 
tions. They  fail  to  perceive  that,  on  the  one  hand, 
all  our  higher  emotions  are  begotten  of  ideals, 
while  on  the  other,  these  ideals  themselves  merely 
universalize  antecedent  but  partial  and  limited 
emotions.  Had  men  no  love  in  their  hearts  they 
could  never  have  conceived  the  ideal  of  universal 
love.  Had  they  no  native  sympathy  they  would 
never  have  invented  patriotism  or  philanthropy. 
As  involuntary  conduct  must  precede  voluntary 
and  "  we  can  never  directly  will  an  act  until  we 
have  before  done  that  act,  and  so  expressed  the 
nature  of  it,"  so  involuntary  feelings  must  pre- 
cede all  the  moral  ideals  which  define  and  extend 
them.  Hence  "  our  first  affections  "  are  in  very 
deed,  "  the  fountain  light  of  all  our  day,  the  mas- 
ter-light of  all  our  seeing." 

The  native  emotion  of  parental  love  dates  from 
*/ insects  and  spiders.     The  native  emotion  of  sym- 


206  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

pathy  dates  from  the  hymenoptera.  The  moral 
ideals  of  universal  love  and  sympathetic  service 
date  from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  outside 
of  the  Christian  world  are  even  to-day  non-ex- 
istent. A  recent  remarkable  manifesto  entitled, 
"  The  Last  Word  of  Islam  to  Europe,"  declares 
that  for  Mussulmans  this  world  contains  two 
kinds  of  human  beings,  believers  and  infidels, 
and  announces  as  the  highest  moral  obligation: 
"  Love,  charity,  brotherhood  to  the  believers ; 
contempt,  hatred,  disgust,  and  war  for  the  infi- 
dels." ^  In  his  very  discriminating  analysis  of 
the  Asiatic  mind  Mr.  Meredith  Townsend  points  ^ 
out  that  not  only  does  the  Asiatic  lack  power  to 
give  any  general  sympathy,  but  he  lacks  even  the 
idea  that  such  sympathy  sbould  be  given.  He 
adds  that  "  it  is,  of  course,  open  to  anyone  to  say 
that  the  grand  Christian  rule  of  love  is  not  ob- 
served in  Europe  either,  but  that  is  only  an  intel- 
lectual quip.  The  European  does  care  for  his 
neighbor  to  a  certain  extent,  and  does  to  a  much 
greater  extent  think  that  he  ought  to  care.  The 
Asiatic  does  not.  He  cares  for  his  family,  his 
caste,  his  class,  his  clan,  and  sometimes  his  pro- 
fession, but  of  his  neighbor  he  is  little  more  re- 
gardful than  one  dog  is  of  another.     He  is  not 

*  See  note  to  an  article  by  Dr.  Harris  entitled  Social  Culture 
in  the  Form  of  Education  and  Religion,  Educational  Review, 
January,  1905. 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND  THE   RACE        207 

affected  by  his  misfortunes,  and  will  help  to  in- 
flict misfortunes  on  him  with  a  serene  callousness, 
which  in  Europe  is  for  the  most  part  never  found. 
The  Asiatic  who  could  not  endure  to  be  an  execu- 
tioner, out  of  sympathy  for  the  victims,  is  proba- 
bly non-existent.  That  want  of  the  power  of  sym- 
pathy is  the  root  of  all  evil  in  him,  the  ultimate 
cause  of  all  the  tyrannies,  the  massacres,  and  the 
tortures  which  from  the  first  have  disgraced  Asi- 
atic life."  1 

The  method  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is 
based  upon  an  intuition  of  the  "  Expulsive  power 
of  higher  affections."  It  aims  to  enlarge  the 
range,  and  increase  the  strength  of  love  and  sym- 
pathy, and  thereby  to  repel  wrath,  lust,  untruth- 
fulness, and  niggardliness.  This  method  is  in 
accord  with  the  doctrines  of  Xeo-Rousseauism  in 
so  far  as  they  assert  that  moral  education  must 
work  from  within  outward,  and  must  therefore 
find  the  point  of  departure  in  some  native  im- 
pulse. It  contradicts  the  later  gospel  in  the  fact 
that  it  discriminates  between  our  native  emotions 
and  while  intensifying  the  power  and  enlarging 
the  range  of  some  of  them,  sternly  inhibits  any 
indulgence  in  others.  In  its  insistence  upon  in- 
hibition it  is  at  one  with  the  educators  who  seek 
to  substitute  acquired  for  native  reactions.  It 
differs   from    them   in   directing   its   prohibitions 

»  Asia  and  Europe,  Meredith  Townsend,  Introduction,  p.  15. 
16 


208  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

against  evil  passions  instead  of  evil  acts,  and  one 
of  its  most  characteristic  features  is  its  abhorrence 
of  that  contradiction  between  act  and  motive 
which  is  fostered  by  the  method  of  making  virtue 

pay. 

As  an  inheritance  from  his  brute  and  savage 
ancestry  man  possesses  a  stock  of  native  emotions 
among  which  are  rage,  resentment,  lust,  deceitful- 
ness,  and  vanity.  It  was  a  great  day  in  human 
history  when  the  blind  victim  of  these  imperative 
impulses  awoke  to  the  consciousness  that  there 
should  be  any  limit  set  to  the  actions  which  they 
provoke.  It  was  another  great  day  when  this 
awakened  consciousness  registered  itself  in  com- 
mandments believed  to  be  divine  and  compulsory. 
Such  commandments,  however,  had  double  conse- 
quences. They  stirred  in  noble  and  sensitive 
minds  a  prescient  feeling  of  the  sinfulness  of  those 
initial  emotions  whose  terminal  acts  they  forbade. 
They  called  forth  in  meaner  minds  all  sorts  of 
devices  for  indulging  the  passions  while  seeming 
to  keep  the  laws.  Untruthfulness  was  tolerated 
when  truth  was  not  buttressed  by  an  oath ;  cun- 
ning devices  winked  at  wrath  and  lust  while  in- 
sisting upon  obedience  to  the  letter  of  the  laws 
against  murder  and  adultery  and  through  the 
subtle  connivance  of  that  pettiest  of  all  human 
emotions,  the  emotion  of  vanity,  acts  of  devotion 
were  prostituted  into  acts  of  self-indulgence  by 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE        209 

praying  where  men  could  see  and  applaud,  and 
sounding  trumpets  to  announce  the  act  of  alms- 
giving. There  was  a  complete  divorce  between 
the  outer  and  the  inner  life.  Men  seemed  to 
others,  and  even  to  themselves,  good,  when  in  re- 
ality they  were  bad,  and  self-satisfaction  steeled 
them  against  reproach  and  rendered  them  im- 
penetrable to  the  most  tender  and  touching  ap- 
peals. 

Aside  from  the  moral  catastrophe  precipitated 
by  inhibiting  actions  while  cherishing  their  cor- 
respondent emotions,  serious  dangers  lurk  in  the 
energy  of  inhibition  even  when  it  is  directed  not 
against  evil  deeds,  but  evil  passions.  To  directly 
inhibit  wrong  feelings  involves  preoccupation 
with  them,  and  such  preoccupation  either  in- 
creases their  sway  or  creates  a  pathologic  con- 
science. As  Professor  Royce  reminds  us,  "  A 
brain  that  is  devoted  to  mere  inhibition  becomes 
in  very  truth  like  the  brain  of  a  Hindoo  ascetic — 
a  mere  '  parasite '  of  the  organism — feeding,  as 
it  were,  upon  all  the  lower  inherited  or  acquired 
nervous  functions  of  this  organism,  by  devoting 
itself  to  their  hindrance.  In  persons  of  morbidly 
conscientious  life  such  inhibitory  phenomena  may 
easily  get  an  inconvenient  and  sometimes  a  dan- 
gerous intensity.  The  result  is  then  a  fearful, 
cowardly,  helpless  attitude  toward  life — an  atti- 
tude which  defeats  its  own  purpose  and  renders 


210  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

the  sufferer,  not  as  he  intends  to  be — '  good,'  but 
a  positive  nuisance."  ^ 

In  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  contradiction  be- 
tween the  inner  and  outer  life  is  canceled  by 
•'directing  the  activity  of  inhibition  not  against 
terminal  acts  but  initial  emotions.  This  change 
of  direction  is  its  first  great  revolutionary  deed. 
Its  second,  and  even  more  revolutionary  act  is  to 
produce  inhibitory  results  by  self-expressive  meth- 
ods. It  liberates  high  energies,  and  sets  them  to 
war  with  base  passions.  Through  these  two  revo- 
lutions it  closes  the  fatal  breach  between  being 
and  appearance,  and  escapes  alike  the  danger  of 
hypocrisy  and  the  danger  of  cowardice. 

To  do  good  acts  from  selfish  motives  is  to  seem 
one  thing  and  to  be  another.  To  be  forever  hold- 
ing one's  self  in  destroys  the  power  of  ever  letting 
one's  self  out.  The  good  life  is  a  positive  life. 
The  good  man  gives,  serves,  loves,  and  through 
the  outrush  of  generosity,  sympathy,  and  affec- 
tion, sweeps  away  his  own  meanness,  tyranny, 
and  lust.  Moreover,  by  a  good  will  which  is  anx- 
ious to  do  more  than  selfishness  can  demand,  he 
calls  forth  responsive  good  will  in  other  men.  Re- 
''  fusing  to  retaliate ;  bestowing  on  his  stern  creditor 
a  free  gift;  always  eager  to  give  and  lend,  and 
going  gladly  two  miles  with  the  man  who  would 
have  compelled  him  to  go  one,  he  wakes  in  other 
>  Outlines  of  Psychology,  Josiah  Royce,  p.  77. 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE        211 

men  "  the  nobkness  which  may  long  sleep  but 
which  is  never  dead."  Thus  in  his  own  soul  and  in 
the  souls  of  others  he  overcomes  evil  with  good, 
and  the  grand  transformation  is  wrought  by  sim- 
ply acting  toward  all  men  as  native  affection  im- 
pels him  to  act  toward  those  he  loves.  The  seem- 
ingly impossible  commands  of  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  are  fulfilled  every  day  by  mothers  who 
yearn  over  erring  children;  by  fathers  eager  to 
save  their  own  prodigal  sons;  by  wives  whom 
cruelty  and  infidelity  challenge  only  to  purer  de- 
votion; by  friends  prompt  to  lay  down  life  itself 
for  a  friend.  True  love  for  one  is  enough  to 
teach  any  man  how  he  ought  to  feel  and  act 
toward  all. 

The  problem  of  moral  education  is  such  a 
serious  one  that  no  difficulty  should  be  minimized 
and  no  question  evaded.  It  is  therefore  incum- 
bent on  us  to  face  the  one  objection  to  which  the 
method  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  seems  open. 
To  command  the  universal  extension  of  a  limited 
and  partial  affection  is  to  define  an  ideal  but  not 
to  bestow  power  to  realize  it.  Our  native  human 
affections  enable  us  to  understand  the  law;  in 
some  of  us  they  are  strong  enough  to  make  us  ap- 
prove the  law;  in  all  of  us  they  are  too  weak  to 
compel  obedience  to  the  law. 
y  The  motive  power  required  for  carrying  out  the 
precepts  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  furnished 


212  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

to  those  who  believe  its  teachings  by  the  doctrines 
of  God  the  Father,  His  providential  rule,  and  the 
infinite  value  of  every  human  soul.  It  has  been 
well  said  that  "  the  moral  reformation  wrought  by 
Christianity  may  be  summed  up  in  the  statement 
that  it  raised  the  feeling  of  humanity  from  a 
feeble  restraining  power  to  an  inspiring  passion." 
Christ  created  what  had  never  existed  before, 
"  the  enthusiasm  for  humanity,"  and  He  did  this 
by  investing  all  men  with  supernatural  value 
through  His  revelation  of  each  and  every  man  as 
a  child  of  God.  "  The  highest  significance  of 
great  men,"  says  Professor  Harnack,^  "  is  to  have 
progressively  enhanced,  that  is,  to  have  progres- 
sively given  effect  to  human  value."  The  unique 
significance  of  Christ  is  to  have  conferred  upon 
all  men  supernatural  value.  Through  recognition 
of  this  supernatural  value  all  other  standards  of 
value  are  overthrown.  The  differences  between 
men  melt  away  in  the  light  of  a  great  equality,  and 
there  is  born  a  passion  which  is  "  neither  love  for 
the  whole  human  race,  nor  love  for  each  indi- 
vidual in  it,  but  a  love  for  the  race  or  for  the  ideal 
of  man  in  each  individual."  And  as  man  is  in- 
spired with  love  for  his  brethren  so  he  is  assured 
of  the  watchful  love  of  the  common  Father.  The 
God  who  cares  even  for  the  flowers  of  the  field 
and  the  birds  of  the  air,  so  loves  His  own  children 
>  What  is  Christianity?  Harnack,  p.  73. 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND  THE   RACE        213 

that  He  counts  the  very  hairs  of  their  heads.  This 
assurance  of  loving  providence  disabuses  men  of 
the  blind  terror  bred  in  them  by  age-long  struggle 
with  wild  beasts  and  wilder  elements,  and  lib- 
erates that  free  energy  which  finds  expression  in 
hope,  joy,  and  heroic  endeavor.  "  We  look  at  the 
rise  of  Christianity,"  says  Mr.  Chesterton,  "  and 
conceive  it  as  a  rise  of  self-abnegation  and  almost 
of  pessimism.  It  does  not  occur  to  us  that  the 
mere  assertion  that  this  raging  and  confounding 
universe  is  governed  by  justice  and  mercy  is  a  bit 
of  staggering  optimism  fit  to  set  all  men  caper- 
ing."i 

In  the  lists  of  our  native  emotions  given  in 
Contemporary  psychologies,  faith  is  conspicuous 
by  its  absence.  Yet  some  degree  of  mutual  trust 
would  seem  to  be  involved  even  in  the  habits  of 
gregarious  animals  and  to  lie  at  the  root  of  any 
form  of  human  society.  Like  love,  faith  is  both 
a  native  impulse  and  a  celestial  virtue.  As  na- 
tive impulse  it  is  the  response  of  man  to  his  own 
peculiar  lineaments  in  other  men,  the  recognition 
of  an  identity  between  himself  and  the  particular 
persons  to  whom  he  is  bound  by  the  tie  of  blood 
or  the  tie  of  special  affinity.  As  a  celestial  virtue 
it  is  the  extension  of  this  native  impulse  from 
the  few  to  all,  through  recognition  by  the  indi- 
vidual of  correspondence  between  his  total  self, 
'  Varied  Types,  Mark  Chesterton,  p.  63. 


214  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  total  self  of  all  other  human  individuals,  and 
the  primal  self  whence  all  selves  proceed.  The 
naive  psychologists  who  created  our  Aryan  speech, 
had  a  wonderful  intuition  of  the  specific  quality 
of  faith.  "  They  derived  both  the  verb  to  believe 
and  the  verb  to  love  "  from  a  word  lubh,  which 
has  retained  its  original  meaning  in  the  San- 
skrit lohha,  desire,  and  the  Latin  libido,  violent, 
irresistible  desire.  The  same  word  was  after- 
wards taken  to  express  that  irresistible  passion 
of  the  soul  which  makes  man  break  through  the 
evidence  of  the  senses  and  the  laws  of  reason 
{credo  quia  absurdurn)  and  drives  him  by  a 
power  which  nothing  can  control  to  embrace  some 
truth  which  alone  can  satisfy  the  natural  cravings 
of  his  being."  ^  The  whole  self  seeks  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  whole  self.  To  the  object  which  as- 
sures this  satisfaction  it  responds  with  an  irresist- 
ible outrush  of  faith  and  love. 

The  objection  may  be  raised  that  I  am  claim- 
ing for  Christianity  an  authority  it  does  not  pos- 
sess. It  is  important,  therefore,  to  explain  that  I 
claim  for  its  psychologic  intuition  and  educa- 
tional method  only  that  right  of  the  species  over 
the  individual  recognized  in  the  doctrine  of  re- 
capitulation. Advocates  of  the  new  return  to 
nature  urge  that  since  mankind  had  to  make 
moral  experiments,  every  individual  must  repeat 
'  Science  of  Language,  Max  Miiller,  vol.  ii,  p.  439 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND  THE   RACE        215 

them.  Preachers  of  the  new  crusade  against 
nature,  insist  that  when  through  experiment  any 
action  was  proved  to  have  destructive  conse- 
quences future  experiments  were  prohibited  by 
law,  and  obedience  to  law  enforced  by  rewards 
and  penalties.  Hence  respect  for  the  parallel  be- 
tween the  development  of  the  individual  and  that 
of  the  race  demands  not  experiment  but  inhibi- 
tion. My  claim  is  simply  that  in  history  itself 
both  these  methods  were  superseded  by  a  new 
method  which  is  a  synthesis  of  their  merits  and 
an  elimination  of  their  defects.  If,  therefore,  we 
are  to  learn  from  history  what  to  do,  we  must  ac- 
cept her  higher  as  well  as  her  more  elementary 
teachings. 

Christianity  is  at  least  a  historic  experiment. 
It  may  be  that  the  hope  of  the  world  centers  in 
making  the  experiment  more  honest  and  more 
radical.  The  characteristic  features  of  the  ex- 
periment are  the  evolution  of  compulsory  ideals 
from  native  emotions  and  the  guaranty  of  both 
native  emotion  and  compulsory  ideal  by  the  sanc- 
tion of  the  universe.  The  cosmos  has  a  character 
akin  to,  but  transcendent  of  what  we  recognize  as 
best  in  ourselves. 

Manifestly  any  method  of  moral  education  pre- 
supposes the  truth  of  its  final  premise.  The  final 
premise  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  faith  in 
personality  as  the  supreme  principle  of  the  uni- 


216  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

verse,  and  faith  in  the  soul  of  man  as  partici- 
pating in  this  principle.  Denial  of  this  faith  lies 
at  the  root  of  many  regressive  educational  prac- 
tices. Its  vindication  to  reason  was  the  feat  of 
that  great  age  of  which  Froebel  is  the  educational 
exponent.  Its  rediscovery  by  a  new  path  of  ap- 
proach and  its  reaffirmation  as  the  final  explana- 
tion of  physical  and  mental  evolution  is  the  task 
with  which  intelligence  is  wrestling  to-day.  There 
are  hopeful  signs  that  the  task  is  in  process  of 
accomplishment.  Discovery  of  the  part  played  by 
attention  in  volition  has  given  new  and  convinc- 
ing reasons  for  a  belief  in  free  will,  and  shown 
that  man  is  something  more  than  "  the  psycho- 
physical mechanism  into  which  causal  science 
construed  him."  *  "  The  demand  that  psychology 
shall  be  studied  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  ex- 
perient "  ^  instead  of  that  of  the  external  ob- 
server, is  transferring  attention  from  "  the  flux  of 
conscious  states  and  the  laws  by  which  it  is 
ordered  to  the  unities  of  mind  and  the  inter- 
ests and  aims  which  express  them."  ^  The  study 
of  mind  as  "  a  cause  in  action  working  out  its 
own  ends  in  conformity  with  its  own  nature,"  * 
is  wakening  anew  the  conviction  that  "  all  true 

'  Science  and  Idealism,  Hugo  Miinsterberg,  p.  27. 

'  Personal  Idealism.  Philosophical  essays  by  eight  mem- 
bers of  the  University  of  Oxford.  Eklited  by  Henry  Sturt, 
p.  170. 

»/fcid.,  p.  171.  *  llrid.,  p.  175. 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND  THE   RACE         21? 

causes  are  first  causes,"  and  a  "  psychology  of 
first  causes "  is  beating  a  short,  though  steep, 
path  of  ascent  toward  the  "  philosophy  of  the 
first  cause."  ^  From  the  mount  of  vision  to 
which  this  path  conducts  reality  is  described  as 
"  neither  a  single  being  nor  many  coordinate  and 
independent  beings,  but  a  one  mind  who  gives 
rise  to  many."  ^  Thus,  the  fundamental  premise 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  vindicated  by 
rational  psychology  in  the  age  of  Froebel,  is  now 
in  process  of  reestablishment,  through  a  psychol- 
ogy of  immediate  concrete  experience,  conceived 
as  the  "  science  of  free  agency." 

Triply  buttressed  by  history,  psychology,  and 
philosophy,  the  method  of  moral  education 
founded  upon  appeal  to  and  extension  of  our 
primal  affections  is  impregnable  against  attack. 
It  has  always  been  the  method  intuitively  adopted 
by  mothers  with  a  genius  for  motherhood.  Com- 
mon practice,  however,  vibrates  perpetually  be- 
tween the  extremes  of  adult  coercion  and  adult 
surrender.  Neo-Rousseauism  merely  formulated 
the  theoretic  equivalent  of  widely  prevalent  meth- 
ods when  it  announced  its  golden  rule :  "  Give 
nature  her  fling."  Disciples  of  the  new  crusade 
against  nature  have  merely  reverted  to  the  time- 
honored    methods   of   the    peach   switch    and   the 

>  Personal  Idealism,  p.  192.  » Ibid.,  p.  391. 


218  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

slipper,  somewhat  more  judiciously  applied  and 
justified  by  theories  of  brain-cells,  nerve  fibers, 
and  native  and  acquired  reactions.  There  is  no 
progress  in  this  swing  of  practice  between  an- 
archy and  a  paternalism  which  is  always  tending 
to  relapse  into  despotism. 

A  wise  method  of  moral  education  should  me- 
/  diate  between  the  practice  of  those  who  hand  over 
the  reins  to  natural  impulse  and  those  who  believe 
in  driving  children  by  reins  held  in  the  hands  of 
the  educator  and  pulling  hard  upon  bits  of  deter- 
rent consequences.  If  the  correspondence  between 
act  and  motive  be  a  cardinal  point  in  the  moral 
life,  is  it  not  a  prime  duty  of  education  to  nur- 
ture those  indigenous  emotions  out  of  which  the 
virtues  grow  ?  If  higher  affections  can  wage 
successful  war  against  lower  ones,  even  after  the 
latter  have  gained  force  by  indulgence,  why  might 
it  not  be  possible  from  the  beginning  of  life  to  in- 
hibit selfishness  by  augmenting  the  energy  of 
social  feeling?  Instead  of  giving  one  or  many 
beatings  to  break  up  the  habit  of  lying,  might  we 
save  children  from  falling  into  this  habit  by 
strengthening  the  ties  of  faith  and  love,  and  di- 
recting the  attack  of  these  native  affections 
against  those  emotions  of  vanity,  terror,  lust,  and 
greed,  which  are  the  most  frequent  provocatives 
of  falsehood  ?  In  general  if  bad  habits  can  be 
broken  up  after  they  are  formed,  why  might  it 


THE   INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE   RACE        219 

not  be  possible  to  prevent  their  formation  ?  These 
are  the  problems  with  which,  as  it  seems  to  me, 
Froebel  has  wrestled  more  successfully  than  any 
other  practical  educator.  His  solution  of  them 
makes  him  a  teacher  of  moral  hygiene  as  opposed 
to  moral  therapeutics,  and  he  has  no  equal  as  a 
spiritual  bacteriologist  and  a  discoverer  of  spir- 
itual antitoxin. 

It  does  not  fall  within  the  compass  of  this  chap- 
ter to  consider  in  detail  Froebel's  many  and  fruit- 
ful suggestions  with  regard  to  the  development  of 
the  virtues  from  seeds  of  emotion  native  to  the 
soil  of  the  mind.  The  limits  of  my  present  dis- 
cussion permit  only  the  general  statement  that  he 
bases  moral  education  upon  appeal  to  social  sym- 
pathy and  claims  as  its  point  of  departure  that 
"  feeling  of  community  first  uniting  the  child 
with  mother,  father,  brothers,  sisters,  and  to 
which  later  on  is  added  the  unmistakable  discov- 
ery that  father,  Aother,  brothers,  sisters,  human 
beings  in  general,  feel  and  know  themselves  to  be 
in  community  and  unity  with  a  higher  principle, 
i.  e.,  with  humanity  and  with  God."  *  The  ap- 
plication of  this  principle  to  the  evolution  of  spe- 
cific virtues  and  the  avoidance  of  specific  vices, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  Mother  Play.  To  this 
unique  book  I  commend  parents  and  teachers  who 

>  Education  of  Man,  p.  25. 


220  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

feel  the  need  of  a  method  of  moral  education  me- 
diatorial between  the  antitheses  of  letting  children 
do  as  they  please  and  either  compelling  them  or 
bribing  them  to  do  as  they  ought. 

With  insight  into  the  truth  that  the  feeling  of 
community  supplies  the  point  of  departure  for 
moral  education,  we  begin  to  realize  that  every 
virtue  may  be  defined  as  a  mode  of  action  called 
forth  by  the  relationship  of  individuals  to  a  social 
whole.  Obedience  is  the  expression  in  action  of 
that  faith  which  is  the  ideal  tie  between  tbe  im- 
mature and  the  maturer  soul.  Kindness  is  good 
will,  astir  and  active,  between  equal  members  of 
a  collective  whble.  Cleanliness  (which  to  super- 
ficial consideration  appears  a  purely  self-regard- 
ing virtue)  is  necessary  in  order  that  the  members 
of  a  social  whole  may  not  offend  one  another's 
senses.  Industry  makes  possible  the  contribution 
of  something  of  value  to  the  whole.  Without 
order  industry  cannot  be  effective.  He  who  is  for- 
ever hunting  things  will  have  no  time  to  do  or 
make  things.  Punctuality  is  respect  for  other 
people's  time  and  industry.  Respect  for  the  prop- 
erty of  others  is  really  respect  for  their  "  stored 
up  "  industry.  Courtesy  is  treating  each  member 
of  a  whole  as  if  he  were  that  which  he  ought  to 
be;  or,  differently  stated,  it  is  the  recognition  in 
manner  that  he  is  fulfilling  his  communal  obliga- 
tions.   In  short,  every  one  of  these  elementary  vir- 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE        221 

tues  is  rooted  in  and  has  been  evolved  from  the 
social  tie.  All  other  virtues  have  the  same  source, 
and  the  way  to  develop  them  is  by  quickening  the 
sense  of  solidarity. 

In  old  times  great  stress  was  placed  upon  the 
formation  of  the  habits  to  which  I  have  referred. 
But  the  old-time  education  failed  to  produce  the 
best  results  because  it  insisted  upon  external  com- 
pliance with  a  taught  obligation  and  ignored  the 
necessity  of  that  internal  compliance  which  alone 
is  efficacious  in  building  character.  Many  of  the 
educators  who  to-day  are  insisting  upon  the  sub- 
stitution of  acquired  for  native  reactions  repeat 
the  error  of  the  ancient  tradition.  A  single  blow 
on  molten  iron  has  more  shaping  power  than  any 
number  of  blows  on  cold  metal.  So  a  child's  char- 
acter is  shaped  more  by  a  single  act  done  because 
with  all  his  heart  he  wants  to  do  it,  than  by  any 
number  of  acts  perfunctorily  performed. 

Right  habits  are  formed  through  the  frequent 
repetition  of  right  actions,  but  right  actions  must 
be  repeated  through  the  child's  own  initiative. 
He  who  compels  another  to  act  against  his  own 
desires  is  a  tyrant,  and  tyranny  in  him  breeds  re- 
bellion in  his  victim.  He  who  knows  how  to  stir 
in  another  impulses  which  make  him  want  to  do 
the  things  he  ought  to  do,  is  a  benefactor  and  lib- 
erator. To  accomplish  this  feat  is  to  realize  the 
highest  ideal  of  moral  education. 


^ 


222  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

I  have  concentrated  the  discussion  of  this  chap- 
ter upon  contrasting  methods  of  education,  as 
illustrated  in  the  moral  sphere,  and  I  have  done 
this  advisedly.  For  the  more  completely  methods 
are  illustrated  in  one  sphere,  the  easier  it  hecomes 
to  recognize  their  merits  or  defects  in  other 
spheres.  It  should  now  need  but  a  few  words  to 
feuggest  that  in  intellectual,  no  less  than  in  moral 
education,  the  method  of  surrender  to  immediate 
impulse  must  give  way  to  the  method  of  inhibi- 
tion, and  the  inhibition  of  lower  interests  must  be 
accomplished  by  creating  higher  ones. 

It  is  an  incontestable  truth  that  no  degree  of 
intellectual  culture  is  possible  without  the  habit  of 
attention,  and  attention  is  an  inhibiting  activity 
which  concentrates  intellect  upon  a  chosen  subject 
by  checking  its  surrender  to  immediate  sense 
stimuli  or  arresting  its  idle  gaze  upon  a  moving 
panorama  of  mental  images.  This  inhibiting  ac- 
tivity takes  two  forms:  the  form  of  voluntary  at- 
tention, wherein  will  issues  a  fiat  to  intellect,  and 
the  form  of  selective  interest,  wherein  either 
through  native  or  acquired  bias,  intelligence  oc- 
cupies itself  with  preferred  objects. 

Through  our  acts  of  voluntary  attention  we 
become  the  determiners  of  our  OAvn  selective  in- 
terest, and  choose  for  ourselves  the  ideas  which 
shall  rule  our  intelligence  and  decide  our  lives. 
On  the  other  hand,  since  voluntary  attention  can 


THE   INDIVIDUAL   AND  THE   RACE        223 

be  sustained  only  for  an  incredibly  short  time,  our 
intellectual  life  would  be  poor,  indeed,  without 
the  conspiring  influence  of  passive  attention  or 
interest.  "  The  sustained  attention  of  the  ge- 
nius," as  Professor  James  reminds  us,  "  is  for  the 
most  part  of  the  passive  sort.  The  minds  of 
geniuses  are  full  of  copious  and  original  associa- 
tions. The  subject  of  thought  once  started  de- 
velops all  sorts  of  fascinating  consequences.  The 
attention  is  led  along  from  one  of  these  to  another 
in  the  most  interesting  manner,  and  never  once 
tends  to  stray  away."  ^  In  the  drama  of  intellect, 
therefore,  selective  interest  plays  a  role  analogous 
to  the  "  expulsive  power  of  higher  affections  in 
the  moral  life."  ^ 

The  questions  proposed  in  the  earlier  part  of 
this  chapter  have  been  answered,  so  far  as  I  can 
find  their  answers,  in  the  teachings  of  history.  It 
seems  true  that  in  the  process  of  phylogenetic  de- 
velopment each  step  "  remembered  its  next  in- 
ferior," but  its  memory  was  often  one  of  disap- 
proval and  the  evolution  of  humanity  has  been 
"  an  evolution  by  antagonism."  Such  goodness 
as  men  have  achieved  has  been  conquered  in  a  war 

»  Talks  on  Psychology  and  Life's  Ideals,  p.  102. 

*To  strengthen  the  power  of  voluntary  attention  and  to 
create  a  rational  selective  interest  are  chief  duties  of  education. 
In  early  childhood  stress  must  be  placed  upon  the  latter  aim. 
In  the  second  chapter  of  this  book  I  have  tried  to  show  how 
Froebel  seeks  to  realize  the  aim. 
17 


224  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

against  nature.  The  ideals  which  incited  the  "war 
have  been  discovered  by  a  descent,  or  rather  an 
ascent  of  man  into  his  own  essential  being.  It 
is  an  indisputable  fact  that  mankind  has  often 
strayed  from  the  path  of  progress.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary for  individuals  to  repeat  the  abortive  experi- 
ments of  the  race.  It  is  not  necessary  for  them 
to  relive  what  humanity  has  outlived.  Vestigial 
emotions  are  harmful  to  their  possessors,  and 
should  be  inhibited  rather  than  indulged.  In  the 
individual  recapitulation  of  race  progress  many 
results  formerly  reached  by  devious  and  winding 
paths  are  attainable  by  "  short  cuts."  The  duty 
of  education  is  to  help  individuals  to  rewin  an- 
cestral successes  and  deliver  them  from  the  neces- 
sity of  repeating  ancestral  failures. 

When  some  fortunate  experimenter  succeeds  in 
making  a  flying  machine,  those  who  follow  him 
will  not  repeat  plans  that  failed.  In  making  their 
flying  machines  they  will  recapitulate  only  the 
successive  steps  of  the  triumphant  process.  The 
paradoxes  of  contemporary  Rousseauism  are  due 
to  the  fact  that  its  champions  ignore  this  manifest 
condition  of  progress.  They  seem  to  think  that 
every  individual  must  experiment  for  himself, 
precisely  as  if  no  one  had  ever  experimented  be- 
fore. Hence  they  arrest  the  development  of  al- 
truistic feeling  by  persistent  appeals  to  selfish- 
ness ;  they  arrest  the  growth  of  will  by  surrender 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  THE  RACE         225 

to  native  impulse,  and  they  arrest  the  develop- 
ment of  intellect  hy  methods  which  chain  the 
mind  to  sense-perception.  They  announce  as  a 
fundamental  principle  that  the  development  of 
the  individual  must  repeat  that  of  the  race.  In 
practice  they  repeat  nothing  but  a  discarded  ter- 
minus ah  quo. 


CHAPTEE   VIII 

THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE 

Whether  we  are  at  one  or  at  war  with  the 
new  return  to  nature  it  surely  behooves  us  to  try 
to  understand  it,  and  we  cannot  understand  it 
without  some  measure  of  sympathy  with  its  cre- 
ative impulse. 

Emerson  tells  us  that  when  quite  young  he 
was  importuned  by  a  valued  adviser  to  respect  the 
dear  old  doctrines  of  the  church.  He  replied: 
"  What  have  I  to  do  with  the  sacredness  of  tradi- 
tion if  I  live  wholly  from  within  ?  " 

"  But  these  impulses  from  which  you  live," 
suggested  his  friend,  "  may  be  from  the  devil." 

"  They  do  not  seem  to  me  to  be  so,"  answered 
Emerson,  "  but  if  I  am  the  devil's  child,  I  will 
live  then  from  the  devil."  ^ 

This  story  lays  bare  the  noblest  impulse  that 
beats  in  the  heart  of  the  new  return  to  nature. 
The  integrity   of  the   universe   seems   bound   up 

>  Essay  on  Self-Reliance. 
226 


THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE    227 

with  the  integrity  of  man's  instincts.  For  these 
instincts  are  the  record  of  aeonic  achievement. 
They  prophesy  the  trend  of  future  achievement. 
They  are  powers  without  whose  conspiracy  future 
achievement  is  impossible.  Man's  conscious  ideals 
may  be  mistaken  definitions  of  the  cosmic  pur- 
pose, whereas  that  purpose  itself  so  far  as  accom- 
plished is  written  in  his  instincts  and  emotions. 
To  distrust  these  holy  records  is  to  distrust  the 
universe  and  introduce  a  fatal  schism  into  our 
own  souls.  To  give  them  frank  and  fearless  ex- 
pression is  to  avow  the  cheery  faith  that  we  share 
the  impulse  by  which  all  things  live,  and  that  we 
are  not  afraid  to  trust  the  honest  purpose  of  the 
whole.  We  may  not  know  whither  we  are  going, 
but  we  are  going  with  the  universe.  We  should 
not  try  to  swim  against  the  cosmic  stream  but 
strike  out  boldly  in  the  direction  of  its  main  cur- 
rent. Such  as  we  are,  nature  has  made  us,  or 
rather  we  are  nature  incarnate  and  should  bravely 
and  joyously  accept  ourselves  as  her  product  and 
revelation. 

"  We  are  nature ;  long  have  we  wandered  but 
now  we  return.  We  are  each  product  and  influ- 
ence of  the  globe.  We  have  circled  and  circled 
until  we  have  returned  home  again.  We  have 
voided  all  but  freedom  and  all  but  our  own  joy."  * 

•Walt  Whitman. 


228  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

The  power  and  appeal  of  the  pedagogic  creed 
based  upon  recognition  of  instinct  as  the  stored-up 
result  of  cosmic  action,  was  largely  derived  from 
the  breadth  of  its  alliances.  It  must  be  frankly- 
recognized  as  the  educational  application  of  a 
fashion  of  thought — or  rather  a  fashion  of  feeling 
— which  for  several  decades  exercised  compelling 
sway  over  many  minds.  Its  source  was  the  evo- 
lutionary dictum  that  all  things  may  be  explained 
by  their  process  of  becoming.  Caught  in  the  toils 
of  this  specious  error,  men  sought  for  God  in  the 
wind,  the  earthquake,  and  the  fire,  and  turned 
deaf  ears  to  the  still,  small  voice  which  speaks  to 
the  listening  soul.  Through  the  influence  of  the 
same  error  all  customs,  traditions,  and  institu- 
tions were  interpreted  as  vanishing  expressions  of 
different  racial  souls.  Art  was  belittled  by  de- 
fining it  as  mere  copy  of  nature  and  forgetting  or 
denying  its  ideal  mission  "  to  transmit  the  high- 
est and  best  feelings  to  which  men  have  risen." 
Poets  and  novelists  sounded  a  challenge  for  "  ab- 
solute surrender  to  the  manhood  current  within," 
and  a  vast  body  of  literature  was  created,  whose 
most  "  discernible  characteristic,"  as  described  by 
its  admirers,  was  "  the  movement  away  from  the 
summits  of  life  downward  toward  the  bases  of 
life ;  from  the  heights  of  civilization  to  the  primi- 
tive springs  of  action ;  from  the  thin-aired  regions 
of  consciousness  which  are  ruled  over  by  tact  to 


THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE    229 

the  underworld  of  unconsciousness — ^where  are 
situated  the  mighty  workshops  and  where  toils  on 
forever  the  cyclopean  youth — Instinct."  * 

A  friend  has  related  to  me  a  dream  which 
seems  almost  typical  of  this  attitude  of  mind. 

In  her  sleep  she  found  herself  upon  a  straight, 
narrow,  uphill  path,  bordered  by  white  lilies. 
She  climbed  wearily,  but  resolutely,  looking  nei- 
ther to  the  right  nor  to  the  left.  At  last  she  stood 
upon  the  top  of  a  high  hill  from  which  she  gazed 
upon  the  boundless  expanse  of  an  emerald  sea. 
Instantly,  with  the  cry  "  Depth  is  better  than 
height,"  she  had  plunged  beneath  its  waves. 

Depth  is  better  than  height — so  declared  that 
now  vanishing  mode  of  thought  which  turned  its 
attention  away  from  the  sky  toward  which  we 
strive  to  the  dust  from  which  we  sprang;  away 
from  ideals  to  instincts;  away  from  the  bitter 
strife  between  what  is  and  what  ought  to  be,  to 
the  joy  of  free  abandon  to  native  impulse.  The 
master  passion  of  the  new  return  to  nature  was 
life.  Living  was  its  longing;  more  life  its  goal. 
Man  palpitates  with  energy  and  there  is  ruddy 
blood  in  his  veins.  He  should  not  permit  his 
mind  to  be  "  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of 
thought "  and  refusing  to  torment  himself  with 
the  mystery  of  life,  should  fling  himself  into  the 

>  James  Lane  Allen. 


230  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

excitement  of  living.  For  what  he  is  the  universe 
has  made  him,  and  now  he  and  the  universe  are 
journeying  together  toward  some  undiscovered 
and  undiscoverable  goal. 

The  ideal  incentive  of  the  new  return  to  nature 
has  never  been  more  sympathetically  presented 
than  in  Whitman's  Song  of  Myself: 

Cycles   ferried   my   cradle,   rowing   and   rowing   like 

cheerful  boatmen. 
For  room  to  me  stars  kept  aside  in  their  own  rings; 
They  sent  influences  to  look  after  what  was  to  hold 

me. 

Before  I  was'  bom  out  of  my  mother  generations 
guided  me. 

My  embryo  has  never  been  torpid;  nothing  can  over- 
lay it, 

For  it  the  nebula  cohered  to  an  orb. 

The  long  slow  strata  piled  to  rest  it  on; 

Vast  vegetables  gave  it  sustenance; 

Monstrous  sauroids  transported  it  in  their  mouths  and 
deposited  it  with  care. 

All  forces  have  been  steadily  employed  to  complete 

and  delight  me. 
Now,  on  this  spot  I  stand  with  my  robust  soul. 

The  inspiration  of  this  jubilant  song  derives 
from  the  conviction  that  each  individual  is 
product  and  epitome  of  the  universe  and  may 
therefore   dare  to   trust   his   robust   soul.      Such 


THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE    231 

a  feat  of  daring  has  been  attempted  on  a  cor 
lossal  scale,  and  its  history  is  simply  the  history 
of  the  free-play  movement  in  the  kindergarten 
writ  large.  As  that  movement  started  with  the 
demand  for  free  self-expression  and  culminated  in 
swift  surrender  to  whim  and  arresting  accent 
upon  the  motor  habits  of  pre-human  ancestors,  so 
the  history  of  the  new  return  to  nature  through- 
out its  entire  sweep  shows  a  rapid  regress  from 
civilization  to  savagism,  and  from  gay  conspir- 
acy with  cosmic  forces  to  the  defiant  or  abject  ac- 
ceptance of  a  fated  universe.  The  literature 
which  started  with  a  challenge  for  surrender  to 
the  manhood  current  within,  has  ended  by  cre- 
ating a  disheartening  series  of  pathological  per- 
sonalities and  by  setting  each  helpless  slave  of 
imperative  impulse  in  surroundings  which  move 
to  his  own  destruction  "  the  machinery  of  his 
being."  The  conception  of  art  as  representation 
culminated  in  representations  which  prostituted 
art.  The  search  of  nature  to  find  out  God  resulted 
in  the  discovery  of  blind  forces  and  chance  re- 
sults ;  and  all  that  evolutionary  science  can  tell  us 
of  the  future  is  that  whatever  matter  and  motion 
have  done  they  will  surely  undo,  and  what  has 
been  evolved  is  fated  to  be  dissolved.  Finally, 
the  racial  souls  heralded  as  the  ancestors  of  insti- 
tutional ideals,  have  turned  out  to  be  themselves 
mere   corollaries   of  brain  structures  created   by 


232  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

heredity  and  transformable  only  by  cross-breed- 
ing. Surrender  to  this  fatalistic  view  of  human 
nature  has  called  forth  denials  of  those  cardinal 
doctrines  of  Christian  democracy  which  declare 
the  sanctity  of  the  individual  and  impose  upon  all 
men  the  duty  to  safeguard  the  liberty  of  each.  It 
has  fostered  an  oriental  and  pagan  disregard  for 
the  masses  of  men,  degraded  humanity  from  the 
image  of  God  to  an  accidental  and  vanishing  type 
of  life,  and  reduced  history  to  a  meaningless 
tragedy.  In  so  far  as  its  conclusions  are  accepted 
life  ceases  to  be  worth  living.  "  It  is  what  it 
ought  not  to  be,  and  passage  from  it  into  nothing- 
ness is  the  only  good."  Thus,  starting  with  the 
repudiation  of  human  ideals  and  the  glorification 
of  human  instincts,  the  new  return  to  nature 
has  culminated,  like  its  historic  prototype,  in  a 
reign  of  terror.  It  is  burning  itself  up  in  the 
hellish  fire  it  has  lighted  and  may  be  safely  left 
to  the  consuming  flames  of  its  own  dialectic  pro- 
cess. 

It  has  been  urged  as  a  criticism  against  Froe- 
bel  that  his  studies  of  childhood  were  conducted 
under  the  incitement  of  that  philosophical  pre- 
supposition which  affirms  that  in  the  structure  of 
consciousness  must  be  sought  the  key  to  human 
development,  and  it  has  been  tacitly  claimed  as  a 
merit  of  the  child-study  movement  that  the  ob- 
servations of  its  advocates  are  made  with  more 


THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE    233 

candid  and  unprejudiced  intellects.  Either  this 
claim  means  nothing,  or  it  means  that  in  their 
own  judgment  the  minds  of  contemporary  child 
students  are  unbiased  by  any  presupposition.  It 
may  therefore  not  be  superfluous  to  suggest  that 
a  presuppositionless  intellect  is  an  impossibility, 
though  it  may  be  freely  granted  that  many  an  in- 
tellect is  swayed  by  presuppositions  of  which  it 
is  unconscious. 

The  great  majority  of  child  students  who  have 
conducted  examinations  and  replied  to  question- 
naires, have  doubtless  done  so  without  a  conscious 
hypothesis  as  a  guide  in  their  investigations. 
The  leaders  of  the  movement,  however,  have  sum- 
marized results  and  formed  conclusions  under  the 
influence  of  a  series  of  presuppositions  implicit 
in  the  general  statement  that  all  facts  and  subjects 
are  explained  by  retracing  their  process  of  devel- 
opment. 

It  is  through  the  reaction  of  these  presupposi- 
tions that  attention  has  been  diverted  from  ideals 
to  instincts  and  undue  accent  placed  upon  hered- 
ity and  environment. 

Kindergartners  who  wish  to  choose  intelligently 
between  Froebel  and  his  latter-day  critics,  must 
therefore  face  and  settle  the  question  whether  the 
process  through  which  a  thing  has  come  to  be 
explains  what  it  is  or  whether  each  thing  is  only 
explained  when  set  in  a  clear  relation  to  its  origin 


234  BDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

and  goal.  Thinkers  accepting  the  former  view 
will  not  only  seek  to  appease  intellect  with  proc- 
esses of  becoming,  but  will  always  tend  to  em- 
phasize earlier  and  lower  stages  of  development. 
Thinkers  accepting  the  latter  view,  will  seek*  the 
eternal  reality  which  includes  all  processes  of  be- 
coming and  will  be  impelled  to  the  conviction 
that  completely  realized  self-consciousness  is  both 
the  origin  and  the  goal  of  cosmic  evolution,  and 
must  therefore  be  the  standard  which  determines 
the  ascent  of  life.  Hence  they  will  be  quick  to 
discern  in  nature  a  tendency  "  to  develop  such 
beings  as  possess  internality  and  energize  to  re- 
alize ideals,"  ^  and  prompt  to  recognize  this  imma- 
nent teleology  as  the  highest  revelation  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution. 

The  fundamental  tenet  of  the  Neo-Rousseau 
creed  is  that  instinct  strictly  defined  as  "  inher- 
ited association  between  stimuli  and  particular 
bodily  reactions,"  is  the  sole  and  sufficient  guide 
of  life.  This  dogma  implies  a  biologic  psychology 
which  holds  that  mind  is  conterminous  with  brain 
structure  and  discredits  consciousness  as  an  "  up- 
start novelty  " ;  ^  a  "  provincial  oracle  " ;  ^  a  "  wart 
raised  by  the  sting  of  sin  " ;  ^  a  "  late,  partial  and 

'  Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  William  T.  HarriSj 
p.  21. 

*  Adolescence,  vol.  ii,  p.  61.  *  Ibid.,  Preface,  p.  vi 

*  Ibid.,  vol.  ii,  p.  67. 


THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE    235 

perhaps  essentially  abnormal  and  remedial  out- 
crop of  the  great  underlying  life  of  man-soul."  * 
The  outcome  of  this  psychology  is  that  man  is  a 
"  specialized  and  partial  being,"  and  the  human 
soul  "  but  one  of  many  types  of  mind  in  the 
world " ;  perhaps  a  "  temporary  and  accidental 
form  which  force  or  life  has  taken  on  " ;  at  best 
"  a  transition  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  race  to 
be  evolved  later."  ^ 

To  thinkers  accepting  these  conclusions,  man, 
conceived  as  a  self-creative  being,  able  to  free  him- 
self from  the  chains  of  antecedent  and  environing 
causation,  ceases  to  exist.  The  permanent  and 
universal  human  person  is  submerged  in  the  cau- 
sal stream.  With  this  submergence  of  the  human 
person  is  sunk  the  conception  of  personality  as 
the  power  whence  the  universe  proceeds;  and  the 
social  union  of  all  personal   spirits  as  both  the 

«  Adolescence,  Preface,  p.  vii. 

' "  If  we  had  all  that  our  heredity  could  possibly  bestow, 
we  should  be  but  8p)ecialized  and  partial  beings.  ...  It 
is  not  inconceivable  that  many  a  species  that  has  become 
extinct  took  with  it  out  of  the  world  the  promise  and  potency 
of  a  higher  psychic  development  than  that  of  man,  but  of  a 
radically  different  type  from  his.  .  .  .  Although  the  highest 
being  that  is,  he  is  perhaps  not  the  highest,  or  even  among 
the  highest,  that  might  have  been,  to  say  nothing  of  what 
may  be  in  other  planets,  or  that  will  be  in  ours.  The  best  and 
only  key  to  explain  mind  in  man  is  mind  in  the  animals  he 
has  sprung  from,  and  in  his  own  infancy,  which  so  faintly 
recapitulates  them." — Ibid.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  65. 


236  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

goal  toward  which  it  progresses  and  the  eternal 
reality  through  which  it  is  finally  explained. 
With  loss  of  divine  and  human  personality  the 
values  of  life  cease  to  appeal  as  standards  by 
which  to  measure  education  and  the  chief,  if  not 
the  sole  concern  of  pedagogics  is  directed  toward 
"  the  ways  and  means  of  investing  man's  capital 
of  native  instincts." 

The  pith  of  all  Neo-Rousseau  doctrines  is  that 
man  and  the  universe  are  developing  through  a 
process  of  mutual  action  and  reaction  but  that 
toward  what  climax  or  anti-climax  they  are  mov- 
ing, we  do  not  and  cannot  know.  The  result  of 
their  reciprocal  action  is  deposited  in  and  revealed 
through  our  basal  instincts,  and  therefore  the  duty 
of  education  is  to  assure  each  child  free  scope  for 
the  exercise  of  every  native  proclivity. 

The  pith  of  Froebelian  doctrine  is  that  man 
and  the  universe  are  evolving  in  a  discernible  di- 
rection toward  a  definable  goal.  In  a  preceding 
chapter  of  this  book  I  have  described  this  goal  as 
an  infinite  community  of  souls,  each  of  which  ful- 
fills itself  through  communion  with  all  others.* 
Such  a  goal  of  the  cosmic  process  implies  that  the 
universe  is  psychical  in  its  nature;  that  there  is 
kinship  between  man  and  the  infinite  source 
whence  he  proceeds,  and  that  since  the  distinctive 

'  See  Chapter  II,  pp.  63-64. 


THE  NEW  RETURN  TO  NATURE    237 

characteristic  of  man  is  self-consciousness,  the 
structure  of  consciousness  and  not  the  basal  in- 
stincts of  men  must  determine  both  the  subject- 
matter  and  the  method  of  education. 

The  transcendental  self-determining  energy 
which  achieves  and  reveals  in  self-consciousness 
its  own  ideal  form,  is  present  wherever  there  is 
life.  This  self-determining  energy  or  will  created 
instincts  by  acting  in  definite  ways.  But  it  did 
not  die  when  it  had  made  these  instincts — neither 
did  it  abdicate  the  throne  of  life  in  their  favor. 
It  is  just  as  alive,  active,  and  sovereign  as  it 
ever  was.  It  is  able  to  modify  the  instincts 
which  are  deposits  of  its  own  past  deeds.  It  is 
able  to  undo  its  own  past  mistakes.  Blind  in 
plants,  dim  of  vision  even  in  the  highest  animals, 
it  achieves  eyes  in  the  intellect  of  man,  and  there- 
after increasingly  directs  itself  through  conscious 
ideals. 

In  the  dark  underworld  of  unconsciousness  the 
Cyclopean  youth,  Instinct,  may  perhaps  toil  on  for- 
ever. But  upon  the  shining  heights  of  life  the 
celestial  youth.  Divine  Humanity,  shall  hereafter 
renounce  his  brute  and  savage  heredity  and  claim 
his  "  heredity  from  God."  He  shall  repudiate 
instincts  that  are  evil  and  get  rid  of  instincts  that 
are  outgrown.  He  shall  purge  valid  instincts  of 
partiality  and  redeem  them  from  distortion.  He 
shall  create  new  instincts  as  allies  in  his  struggle 


238  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

for  freedom.  All  these  things,  and  greater  things 
than  these,  he  shall  do  through  the  power  of 
ideals  which  will  be  ascending  definitions  of  his 
own  personality  and  ascending  revelations  of  the 
Infinite  Person  from  whom  he  proceeds. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE    INDUSTRIAL    PROGRAMME 

The  concentric  programme  was  carried  into  the 
kindergarten  by  that  tidal  wave  of  Herbartianism 
which  some  years  since  swept  over  our  school  sys- 
tem. The  free-play  programme  was  the  outcome 
of  the  child-study  movement.  It  is  well  to  remind 
ourselves  that  neither  of  these  now  vanishing 
methods  arose  within  the  kindergarten,  but  were 
due  to  the  influence  of  educators  not  imbued  with 
the  ideals  of  which  it  is  the  embodiment.  The 
same  fact  holds  with  regard  to  the  living  issues  to 
be  discussed  in  this  chapter.  They  have  arisen 
through  the  pressure  of  outside  influence,  and  em- 
body theories  not  only  at  variance  with  but  de- 
structive of  the  fundamental  principles  of  Froebel. 

As  the  most  rapid  approach  to  the  living  is- 
sues now  dividing  the  kindergarten  public,  I  pre- 
sent a  programme  published  in  the  Kindergarten 
Magazine  for  October,  1907.^     The  most  cursory 

•  I  present  this  programme  because  it  illustrates  all  the 
fallacies  of  the  industrial  kindergarten  and  because  through 
the  pages  of  the  Kindergarten  Magazine  it  reaches  thousands 
of  young  and  inexperienced  kindergartners. 
18  239 


240  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

glance  will  disclose  the  fact  that  it  is  cpncentric  '^ 
in  its  form,  but  differs  from  its  Herbartian  pro- 
genitor by  placing  its  accent  upon  p^ynitiye  indus- 
tries instead  of  primitive  culture  products.  The 
correlating  center  of  this  programme  is  the  potato, 
and  the  exercises  for  the  several  days  of  the  week 
are  as  follows :  ^ 

I  desire  to  state  explicitly  that  I  do  not  intend  to  imply- 
that  any  leading  representative  of  the  industrial  ideal  in  the 
kindergarten  would  approve  of  this  programme. 

As  actually  carried  out  in  the  kindergarten,  the  industrial 
ideal  assumes  many  different  forms.  Some  kindergartners 
merely  represent  household  industries  in  play.  Others  actually 
introduce  such  industries  into  the  kindergarten,  but  call  for 
them  at  comparatively  rare  intervals  and  do  not  make  them 
centers  of  correlation.  It  is  impossible  to  describe  all  shades 
of  opinion  and  practice.  Judging,  however,  from  printed 
articles  and  exhibits  of  kindergarten  work,  from  lectures,  and 
from  the  kindergarten  supplies  called  for  in  different  cities,  the 
following  tendencies  would  seem  to  be  quite  widespread. 

1.  The  tendency  to  make  household  industries  a  part  of 
kindergarten  activity. 

2.  The  tendency  to  supplant  play  by  work. 

3.  Preponderant  appeal  to  the  understanding. 

4.  Insistence  upon  functional  values. 

5.  The  substitution  of  constructive  work  for  free  self- 
expression. 

6.  The  too  great  restriction  of  kindergarten  games  to  the 
representation  of  industrial  activities. 

The  elimination  of  that  appeal  to  imagination  through 
ypical  acts  which  is  the  most  characteristic  and  valuable 
feature  oi  the  Froebelian  kindergarten. 

'  The  following  prefatory  note  explains  the  general  ideas 
underlying  this  programme: 

"This  subject  should  begin  with  the  planting  of  the  potato 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  241 

I.    PLANTING   OF   THE   POTATO 

The  digging  and  planting"  of  potatoes.  Gather  them 
into  a  pile,  load  one  of  the  children's  wagons,  carry 
them  to  the  cellar  of  the  person  to  whom  the  potatoes 
are  to  be  given,  and  store  them  away. 

11.  BOILING  OF  POTATOES 
(a)  Let  the  children  wash  and  peel  potatoes.  (&) 
In  the  interval  of  waiting  for  them  to  be  cooked,  feed 
the  peelings  to  the  chickens,  or  clean  a  water  bottle 
with  some  of  them  by  breaking  them  up  and  shaking 
them  around  in  the  same  with  water.  This  whole  les-- 
son  can  be  given  in  the  kindergarten;  hut  if  at  the 
home  of  one  of  the  children,  the  potatoes  should  not 
he  eaten  hy  the  children,  hut  the  work  can  he  done  as 
a  service  to  the  family,  though  one  potato  might  he 
tasted.  Enough  more  than  those  required  for  the 
family  dinner  should  be  cooked  that  a  few  may  be 
taken  to  the  school  for  use  the  next  day. 

III.    FRY    POTATOES,    USING    SOME    OF 
THOSE   BOILED   ON   THE 
PREVIOUS  DAY 
(In  contrast  to  the  lesson  of  the  day  before,  let  this 
one  be  given  in  the  kindergarten.) 

in  the  spring.  The  potato  can  be  harvested  in  the  autumn. 
As  the  season  of  frost  approaches  the  children  begin  to  wear 
warmer  clothes,  the  leaves  to  fall,  and  the  family  to  make  its 
preparation  for  the  winter.  At  this  time  let  the  children 
inspect  their  garden  and  decide  upon  whom  to  bestow  their 
crop  of  potatoes,  and  then  store  them  away  for  the  winter."— 
Kindergarten  Primary  Magazine,  October,  1907. 


242  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

(a)  Each  one  can  slice  one  potato,  and  turn  the 
same  into  the  skillet,  (b)  While  waiting  for  them 
to  brown,  assign  different  occupations  to  different 
members  of  the  group.  Two  at  a  time  can  watch  the 
potatoes,  some  set  the  table  and  decorate  it  with  au- 
tumn leaves,  while  others  put  the  kitchen  corner  of 
the  kindergarten  into  order,  sweeping  the  floor  and 
washing  the  soiled  pans  that  previously  contained  their 
potatoes.  Of  course,  at  least  an  hour's  time  is  essen- 
tial to  complete  this  lesson  in  an  orderly  way. 


IV.    GRATING  OF  POTATOES  FOR  POTATO 
PANCAKES 

(a)  The  children  grate  the  potatoes  in  water.  Turn 
this  grated  mass  into  a  cheese-cloth  bag  and  squeeze 
out  the  water  (saving  this  water  with  its  sediment 
until  the  following  day),  (b)  Beat  both  parts  of  one 
egg>  pour  it  into  the  grated  mass,  thinning  it  with 
a  little  milk,  grease  the  frying  pan,  and  bake  the 
cakes,  letting  each  one  take  part.  Let  this  be  done 
as  a  surprise  for  one  of  the  teachers,  the  children 
presenting  them  to  her.  The  children,  of  course, 
should  have  a  taste.  They  should'  be  given  time  to 
wash  all  the  dishes  and  to  put  everything  away. 


V.    THE  MAKING   OF   STARCH 

This  can  be  done  by  pouring  off  the  colored  water 
from  the  sediment  left  in  the  pan  from  the  previous 
lesson.  The  sediment  will  prove  to  be  starch.  Let 
the  children  find  this  out  by  the  pouring  on  and  off 


THE   INDUSTRIAL   PROGRAMME  243 

of  clean  water  till  it  grows  entirely  clear.  Draw 
off  the  last  water  entirely,  and  let  the  starch  dry 
in  the  sun. 


VI.    THE  DOLLS'   WASHDAY 

The  dolls  come  to  the  kindergarten  with  their  soiled 
clothes,  and  the  children  wash  them.  Be  sure  to  have 
them  sort  the  white  and  colored  clothes  and  make 
laundry  books.  See  a  more  complete  description  of 
how  to  plan  this  lesson  in  the  kindergarten  outline 
under  the  subject  of  water.' 


VII.    IRONING  DAY 

Of  course,  the  ironing  of  these  clothes  must  follow 
the  washing,  and  then  the  dolls  can  be  dressed  in 
their  clean  clothes  and  be  invited  to  listen  to  a 
story,  and  look  at  some  appropriate  pictures. 

See  the  set  of  pictures  illustrated  by  Ludwig 
Richter.  There  are  several  drawings  consisting  of 
children  washing  their  doll's  clothes,  and  the  like.  See 
his  Aus  dem  Kinderlehen  containing  twenty-four 
pictures,  songs  and  rhymes. 

In  all  these  lessons  while  the  children  are  busy  with 
doing,  call  their  attention  to  the  different  changes  as 
they  occur  throughout  a  complete  process.  Do  not 
tell  them  beforehand  that  the  potato  contains  starch; 
let  the  truth  present  itself.  It  will  be  observed  that 
all  these  miniature  science  lessons,  however,  contain 
a  strong  ethical  value,  the  children's  activity  being 
based  upon  an  inspiration  to  serve  others. 

*  (All  italics  mine.) 


244  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

No  person  imbued  with  the  educational  prin- 
ciples of  Froebel  can  read  this  programme  without 
an  immediate  perception  of  the  fact  that  its  au- 
thor has  either  consciously  rejected  or  uncon- 
sciously lost  the  idea  which  originally  created  the 
kindergarten.  As  has  been  repeatedly  stated  in 
this  book  that  creative  idea  was  to  freight  the 
form  of  play  with  the  values  of  life.  The  char- 
acteristic feature  of  the  programme  presented  is 

4^hat  in  it  thcLform  of  play  has  been  supplanted 
by  the  form  of  work. 

To  realize  the  meaning  of  this  transposition  we 
must  consider  even  more  carefully  than  we  have 
done  hitherto  the  respective  marks  and  values  of 
play  and  work.    The  characteristic  quality  of  play 

vis  that  it  is  an  activity  which  is  its  own  end.  It 
is  therefore  free  to  modify  or  change  itself.  The 
following  description  of  a  little  child's  play  with 
her  blocks  will  illustrate  this  quality  of  freedom, 
and  suggest  its  value : 

The  child  sits  on  the  floor  and  I  ask  her  to  make  a 
church  like  the  one  she  sees  pictured  in  her  book.  She 
begins,  lays  the  foundation  of  the  church:  a  long  line 
of  blocks  laid  straight,  with  another  line  crossing  the 
first  about  two-thirds  of  its  length.  Then  suddenly 
her  face  lights  up  and  she  quickly  takes  more  blocks 
and  lays  a  third  line  parallel  with  the  second  and 
crossing  the  long  line  at  one  third  of  its  length. 
"What  are  you  doing  that  for?"  I  ask;  "I  never 
taught  you  to  make  a  church  with  two  cross  lines." 


THE   INDUSTRIAL   PROGRAMME  245 

"  Oh,  no ;  I  am  making  an  animal,"  says  she,  "  with  a 
head  and  a  tail  and  four  legs."  She  has,  to  my  knowl- 
edge, never  made  an  animal  like  this  before,  and  she 
certainly  did  not  set  out  to  make  an  animal.  It  had 
come  to  her  in  her  progress  with  the  church  that  the 
arrangement  might  be  altered  so  as  to  make  an  ani- 
mal. That  is,  her  mental  picture  had  come,  in  her 
action  upon  it,  especially  in  laying  the  cross  line  of 
blocks,  to  be  assimilated  with  her  old  mental  picture 
of  an  animal;  and  forthwith,  by  the  addition  of  an- 
other line  like  the  former,  the  church  turned  into  an 
animal.  Now  this  is  an  invention  in  the  strictest 
sense.  It  is  peculiar  to  the  child.  Who  ever  before  ■ 
made  an  animal  out  of  a  church?  What  external  in- 
fluence suggested  to  the  child  the  similarity  between 
the  essential  lines  of  the  two  objects?  What  former 
single  mental  picture  of  her  own  adequately  explains 
this  sudden  outcome?  If  none  of  these,  then  all  the 
sources  are  exhausted  and  we  must  say  that  she  is  an 
inventor  as  much  as  any  historical  genius  is  who  has 
enriched  the  world  by  his  thought. 

But  now  the  child  does  something  further;  she  calls 
upon  everybody  in  the  room  to  come  and  see  the  ani- 
mal which  she  has  made;  she,  no  less  than  the  first 
Maker  of  whom  we  are  told,  looks  upon  the  thing 
which  she  hath  made,  and  lo!  it  is  very  good.  And 
then  she  amuses  herself  by  making  the  animal  again 
and  again,  and  saying  also,  "  It  is  not  a  church,  for  a 
church  doesn't  have  these  two  ends  •  (the  third  line 
across),  I  have  made  it  into  an  animal."  So — and  this 
is  her  second  invention — she  has  changed  her  thought  of 
herself.  To  herself  she  is  now  a  person  who  can  make 
animals  out  of  churches.  She  is  in  a  new  sense — or 
at  least  from   a  new  point  of  view — an  agent;  her 


246  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

growing  sense  of  her  own  originality,  power  over 
things,  freedom  to  depart  from  the  thraldom  of  imi- 
tation has  received  an  impulse.  The  next  time  she 
comes  to  play  with  her  blocks  the  splendid  invention 
of  this  occasion  is  full  in  her  mind,  and  the  blocks, 
together  with  the  suggestions  which  I  make  for  their 
use,  are  to  her  things  for  her  domineering  ego  to 
trifle  with,  despise,  and  utilize  as  never  before.  She 
has,  therefore,  come  to  a  new  thought  of  herself,  and 
this  is  also  a  discovery,  an  invention/ 


Through  play  the  child  becomes  original  and 
conscious  of  originality.     He  feels  himself  a  crea- 

Y  tive  first  cause;  rejoices  in  his  sense  of  freedom; 
and  is  impelled  to  further  exercise  of  creative  ac- 
tivity. Through  the  reaction  of  creative  deeds  he 
creates  himself  as  a  unique  individual.  Without 
this  self-creative  activity  all  human  beings  would 
tend  to  become  tiresome  repetitions  of  one  dull 
pattern. 

In  contrast  with  play,  which  is  its  own  motive 
and  whose  characteristic  mark  is  its  freedom  to 
change  itself,  work  is  activity  directed  to  the  ac- 

,  complishment  of  a  purpose  and  its  demand  is  that 
the  worker  shall  hold  himself  persistently  to  his 
task.  In  play,  activity  and  end  coalesce ;  in  work 
they  fall  apart  The  accent  of  play  is  upon  a  proc- 
ess of  activity;  the  accent  of  work  upon  its  procj- 

>  Soci^  and  Ethical  Interpretations,  James  Mark  Baldwin, 
pp.  107/108. 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  247 

net.  The  value  of  work  is  that  it  subordinates  the 
self;  the  value  of  play  that  it  creates  the  self. 

Many  recent  discussions  with  regard  to  play  and 
work  betray  confusion  of  mind.  It  is  often  as- 
sumed that  the  distinction  between  work  and  play 
implies  that  some  activities  always  preserve  the 
form  of  play,  while  others  can  never  lose  the  form 
of  work.  The  truth  of  this  assumed  implication 
being  denied,  an  effort  is  made  to  remove  entirely 
the  boundary  line  between  the  two  types  of  activ- 
ity. It  is  urged  that  many  games  of  strength  and 
skill  demand  a  persistent  training  which  is  not  its 
own  end  and  reward.  Here,  therefore,  is  play 
turning  over  into  work.  Little  children  enjoy 
cooking,  sweeping,  washing,  and  ironing  for  them- 
selves and  apart  from  their  results.  Here  is  work 
turning  over  into  play.  "  Up^  to  the  sixth  year," 
writes  Miss^  Dopp,  "  when  the  object  begins  to 
stand  out  more  clearly  in  the  child's  mind,  when 
the  inner  and  the  outer  begin  to  differentiate, 
there  is  no  distinction  between  work  and  play.* 
To  be  sure  there  are  differences  in  activities  very 
early,  but  if  not  fettered  by  external  conditions 
the  activity  is  equally  free  play  whether  it  serves 
the  purpose  of  utility  in  the  sense  of  the  adult; 
whether  it  serves  the  purpose  of  play,  as  making 
a  doll's  house,  or  whether  it  is  purely  imaginary, 
as  in  the  case  of  dramatic  play.     It  is  important 

I  Is  not  the  reason  for  this,  that  the  child  never  works? 


248  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

that  the  child  get  his  full  share  of  each  variety  of 
play  and  that  its  free  character  be  maintained."  ^ 

The  argument  advanced  is  vitiated  by  the  fal- 
lacy of  the  assumption  whence  it  proceeds.  The 
distinction  between  play  and  work  does  not  imply 
that  different  activities  are  bound  forever  to  their 
respective  forms.  The  same  activity  may  take  on 
at  one  time  the  form  of  play  and  at  another  the 
form  of  work.  The  difference  between  activities 
depends  upon  the  tendency  to  assume  preponder- 
antly one  or  the  other  form.  Through  a  tacit  rec- 
ognition of  prevailing  tendency,  the  common  sense 
of  mankind  has  relegated  some  activities  to  the 
class  of  play  and  others  to  the  class  of  work.  The 
housemaid  who  knew  she  had  become  a  Christian 
because  contrary  to  former  practice  she  always 
swept  dust  from  out  the  corners  and  from  under 
the  bed  divined  truly  the  criterion  of  work.  She 
knew  that  the  purpose  of  sweeping  was  a  clean 
room,  and  that  she  was  the  instrument  of  this 
purpose. 

Activitieswhich  offer  scope  for  originality  will 
tend  to  assume  preponderantly  the  form  of  play; 
those  which  do  not  permit  original  action  will 
tend  to  assume  preponderantly  the  form  of  work. 
There  is,  therefore,  a  maximum  possibility  for 
play  in  dramatic  games  and  in  building  and  ar- 

•  The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary  Education,  Katha- 
rine Elizabeth  Dopp,  pp.  116,  117, 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  249 

rangement  exercises,  and  a  minimum  possibility 
for  play  in  cooking,  laundry  work,  sweeping  and 
dusting.  It  is  true  that  from  time  to  time  little 
children  imitate  these  several  activities  for  the 
pleasure  of  the  imitation.  Such  pleasure,  how- 
ever, must  wane  with  their  enforced  repetition, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  make  them  integral  exer- 
cises of  the  kindergarten  without  changing  play 
into  work.  Moreover,  it  is  unlikely  that  such 
work  will  be  well  done,  and  therefore  its  educative 
value  will  be  lost.  To  cook  coarsely,  scrub,  sweep, 
and  dust  carelessly,  wash  without  cleansing  and 
iron  without  smoothing  is  simply  to  form  bad 
habits  and  obscure  ideals  of  cleanliness,  thorough- 
ness, and  refinement. 

The  argument  against  making  household  indus- 
tries integral  parts  of  kindergarten  activity  con- 
denses itself  into  the  statement  that  this  cannot  be 
done  without  entirely  revolutionizing  the  form  of 
that  activity.  Fairness  demands  that  we  should 
consider  the  justifying  reasons  offered  for  the  pro- 
posed revolution.  The  reasons  which  seem  to  have 
had  most  influence  are  lucidly  and  precisely  stated 
V  by  Miss  Katharine  Dopp  in  a  book  entitled  The 
Place  of  Industries  in  Early  Education,  and  I 
cannot  do  better  than  quote  her  words: 

From  the  remotest  to  the  most  recent  times,  in  the 
simplest  as  well  as  in  the  most  highly  organized  so- 
cieties, industry  has  been  a  dominant  force  in  the  up- 


250  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

building  and  maintaining  of  social  structures.  In  the 
more  simple  social  groups  it  is  possible  to  perceive 
very  clearly  the  fundamental  place  of  industry  in  so- 
ciety and  the  vitality  of  its  relation  to  all  other  activ- 
ities of  life.  In  such  societies  it  appears  as  the  ma- 
trix that  holds  within  itself  the  other  interests  of  life 
which  it  nourishes  until  they  become  strong  enough 
to  support  themselves.^  .  .  . 

There  is  a  closer  relationship  than  is  usually  recog- 
nized between  the  activities  of  the  child  and  the  se- 
rious activities  of  society  in  all  ages.*  .  .  . 

It  is  an  accepted  truth  that  those  racial  activities 
which  are  most  ancient  and  most  prolonged  have  had 
the  most  potent  influence  in  determining  the  attitudes 
of  mankind.  Attitudes  due  to  such  causes  appear 
earliest,  and  although  they  may  early  be  overlaid  with 
more  complex  habits,  they  remain  strong  throughout 
life;  and  when,  as  decay  sets  in,  the  more  complex 
habits  one  by  one  disappear,  these  native  instincts 
reassert  themselves  and  persist  till  the  last. 

There  are  instincts  that  have  resulted  from  later 
racial  activities,  but  their  early  appearance  as  well  as 
their  permanence  is  in  direct  proportion  to  the  re- 
moteness and  duration  of  the  activities  which  pro- 
duced them.  Comparatively  recent  racial  activities 
certainly  operate  in  determining  the  attitudes  of  the 
child;  but  they  operate  not  through  physical,  but 
through  social  heredity. 

Darwin  is  a  notable  example  of  those  scientists  who 
have  attempted  to  explain  human  emotional  attitudes 
by  reference  to  those  of  animals.  However  fruitful 
such  an  investigation  may  be,  it  seems  to  promise  less 

>  The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary  Education,  Kath- 
arine Elizabeth  Dopp,  p.  2.  *  Ibid.,  p.  6. 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  251 

for  educational  purposes  than  investigations  along 
racial  lines;  for  it  must  be  remembered  that  continu- 
ity in  emotional  attitudes  can  be  explained  only  on  the 
basis  of  biological  function.  For  this  reason  educa- 
tion must  wait  upon  biological  science  until  the  condi- 
tions needed  are  established,  and  even  then  the  use 
of  the  materials  offered  is  open  to  the  charge  of  ex- 
plaining the  more  clear  by  the  less  clear.  Until  we 
know  more  of  the  consciousness  of  animals  we  are 
scarcely  in  a  position  to  make  a  profitable  use  of  ani- 
mal psychology  in  interpreting  the  activities  of  the 
child. 

When  we  attempt  to  interpret  the  attitudes  of  the 
child  in  the  light  of  the  activities  of  the  race  there 
is  more  hope  of  success;  for  the  continuity  of  the  bio- 
logical function  upon  which  the  continuity  of  emo- 
tional attitudes  depends  is  a^sured^ 

•  «  «  «  « 

In  proportion  as  society  lays  hold  of  instinctive  re- 
actions and  harnesses  them  to  present  social  needs  the 
process  of  education  is  promoted.  The  most  serious 
mistake  has  been  the  tendency  to  ignore  the  psychical 
attitudes  of  the  child  by  imposing  upon  him  the  highly 
organized  products  of  present  social  life.  It  is  begin- 
ning to  be  more  generally  recognized,  however,  that 
education,  to  be  vital,  must  be  grounded  deep  in 
physical  heredity,  and  to  be  of  real  social  service 
must  be  guided  and  refined  in  the  light  of  our  own 
highest  social  ideals.  The  natural  emotional  reac- 
tions are  fixed,  and  we  need  not  expect  any  funda- 
mental change.    It  is  the  part  of  wisdom  to  build  upon 

'  The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary  Education,  Kath- 
arine Elizabeth  Dopp,  pp.  61, 62.     (Italics  mine.) 


252  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

ihis  sure  foundation,  rather  than  to  seek  one  among 
the  shifting  sands  of  more  recent  times.  The  achieve- 
ments of  recent  civilization  are  of  value  not  in  deter- 
mining the  foundation,  but  in  fashioning  the  struc- 
ture that  is  reared  upon  it/ 

*  *  *  *  * 

Civilization  is  only  as  yesterday  when  viewed  with 

reference  to  the  long  period  of  human  development 

the  deep-seated,  permanent,  and  abiding  impulses  are 
the  result  of  racial  experiences  before  man  had 
emerged  from  the  savage  stage;  .  .  .  later  racial  activ- 
ities influence  psychical  attitudes  in  a  much  less  per- 
manent way.* 

*  *  *  *  * 

The  child  lives  in  the  present.  He  must  find  his 
satisfaction  in  an  immediate  way.  His  pleasurable 
emotions  are  bound  up  with  his  instinctive  reactions. 
Because  these  reactions  have  been  marked  out  by  the 
serious  activities  of  the  race  in  its  first  steps  in  human 
progress,  because  they  represent  the  processes  of  mod- 
em civilization  in  their  most  rudimentary  forms,  they 
serve  to  present  the  educational  opportunity  for  estab- 
lishing helpful  relations  between  the  life  of  the  past 
and  that  of  the  present.  By  making  use  of  these  in- 
stinctive reactions  it  is  possible  to  make  a  gradual 
transition  from  the  dramatic  and  play  interests  of 
the  child  to  the  more  serious  interests  of  the  adult.* 
***** 

The  house  industries  are  especially  significant  with 
reference   to    elementary   education.      They    represent 

'  The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary  Education,  Kath- 
arine Elizabeth  Dopp,  pp.  88,  89.     (Italics  mine.) 

» IHd.,  p.  8.  »  Ibid.,  pp.  89,  90. 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  253 

the  experiences  of  the  race  in  industrial  activities, 
whether  private  or  public,  through  the  long  ages  which 
preceded  the  handicraft  period.  They  are  important 
as  factors  in  the  shaping  of  the  early  forms  of  our  in- 
stitutions, and  give  a  significance  to  much  that  would 
be  meaningless  apart  from  such  a  relation.  They  rep- 
resent the  activities  which  were  instrumental  in  the 
formation  of  our  physical  coordinations  and  psy- 
chical attitudes.  In  relation  to  the  early  years  of 
development  they  are  much  more  important  than  the 
industrial  activities  of  later  periods,  because  they  cor- 
respond more  closely  to  the  psychical  attitudes  of  the 
child  than  do  the  activities  of  later  periods.  The  ac- 
tivities of  later  epochs  are  not  without  their  influ- 
ence in  shaping  the  attitudes  of  the  child,  but  they 
operate  more  through  social  than  through  physical 
heredity.* 

Let  us  summarize  the  thoughts  presented  in 
these  several  extracts  in  order  that  we  may  grasp 
their  logical  connection  and  appreciate  the  peda- 
gogical conclusion  to  which  they  point. 

I 

Industry  is  "  the  matrix  that  holds  within  itself 
the  other  interests  of  life." 

n 

The  native  interests  and  instinctive  reactions  of 
contemporary  childhood  have  been  created  by  the 
industrial  activities  of  society  throughout  the  ages. 

» The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary  Education,  pp. 
14,  15.     (All  italics  mine.) 


254  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

in 

"  In  proportion  as  society  lays  hold  of  instinc- 
tive reactions  and  harnesses  them  to  present  social 
needs  the  process  of  education  is  promoted." 
"  To  be  vital  education  must  be  grounded  in  phys- 
ical heredity." 

IV 

"  Those  racial  activities  which  are  most  ancient 
and  most  prolonged  have  had  the  most  potent  in- 
fluence in  determining  the  attitudes  (or  instinc- 
tive reactions)  of  mankind. 


"  In  relation  to  the  early  years  of  development 
household  industries  are  much  more  important 
than  the  industrial  activities  of  later  periods  be- 
cause they  correspond  more  closely  to  the  psychi- 
cal attitudes  of  the  child." 

The  reader  will  remember  that  the  free-play 
programme  was  dominated  by  the  ideal  of  biologic 
recapitulation.  The  salient  fact  with  regard  to 
the  plan  of  education  proposed  in  the  extracts 
quoted  is  that  it  deserts  biologic  recapitulation  in 
favor  of  historic  recapitulation.  Its  primary  as- 
sumption is  that  contemporary  mankind  can  be 
more   adequately  explained   by   human  than  hj 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  255 

brute  heredity.  The  deeds  and  expressions  of  ani- 
mals and  men  have  made  man  all  he  is.  The 
deeds  of  men  have  been  more  influential  in  shap- 
ing contemporary  mankind  than  the  deeds  of  ani- 
mals. The  most  ancient  and  most  prolonged 
racial  activities  have  contributed  most  to  the  shap- 
ing of  man.  Primitive  activities  explain  the  in- 
stinctive reactions  of  childhood,  and  education 
should  begin  by  repeating  them.  These  primitive 
activities  are  represented  to-day  by  household  in- 
dustries. Therefore,  let  little  children  cook,  wash, 
scrub,  sweep,  and  dust. 

These  statements  bristle  with  unproved  as- 
sumptions. Let  us  begin  with  the  final  one.  Is 
it  true  that  all  our  present  household  industries 
correspond  with  primitive  activities?  In  the 
mind  of  any  candid  person  a  visit  to  the  St.  Louis 
Fair  would  have  dispelled  the  idea  that  this  ques- 
tion could  be  answered  in  the  affirmative.  The 
one  fact  which  glared  upon  the  observer  as  he 
walked  about  among  the  primitive  peoples  there 
assembled  was  that  they  washed  little  and 
scrubbed,  swept,  and  dusted  not  at  all.  Cleanli- 
ness in  all  its  forms  is  tainted  with  modernity. 
When,  therefore,  we  insist  that  little  children 
shall  repeat  the  cleansing  processes  of  contempo- 
rary life,  what  are  we  doing  but  "  seeking  a  foun- 
dation for  education  among  the  shifting  sands  of 

recent  times  ? " 
19 


256  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

We  may  close  our  eyes  to  the  inconsistency  of 
the  industrial  programme,  but  we  must  not  evade 
the  doubts  which  assail  our  minds  with  regard  to 
the  strength  of  its  theoretic  foundation.  Can  man 
be  adequately  explained  either  by  his  brute  or  hu- 
man ancestry,  or  by  both  conjoined  ?  Is  industry 
the  fountain  source  of  the  arts  and  institutions  of 
society?  The  proof  offered  in  support  of  these 
assumptions  seems  to  me  insufficient.  In  the  final 
chapter  of  this  book  I  shall  offer  an  alternative 
explanation  of  man,  and  in  the  next  preceding 
chapter  discuss  the  relationship  of  industries  to 
arts  and  institutions.  For  the  moment  I  must 
restrict  myself  to  a  series  of  denials  and  a  brief 
confession  of  faith.  I  do  not  believe  that  the 
psychical  attitudes  of  childhood  can  be  fully  ex- 
plained by  physical  heredity.  I  deny  the  state- 
ment that  even  instinctive  reactions  have  been 
created  solely  or  chiefly  by  racial  activities  of  in- 
dustrial type.  I  am  sure  that  industry  is  not  "  the 
fountain  source  of  the  arts  and  institutions  of  so- 
ciety." I  conceive  man  as  self-creative  energy.  I 
conceive  history  as  the  process  through  which  man 
makes  himself  actually  what  from  the  beginning 
be  is  ideally.  I  recognize  in  play,  art,  literature, 
ethics,  and  religion,  aboriginal  expressions  of  the 
free  human  spirit  and  denying  that  they  are 
the  offspring  of  industry  confess  them  its  pro- 
genitors. 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  257 

Referring  the  reader  to  the  final  chapter  of  this 
book  for  the  vindication  of  my  confessed  faith,  I 
pass  on  to  consider  an  additional  reason  urged  for 
the  introduction  of  household  activities  into  the 
kindergarten.  "  The  child  of  to-day,"  we  are  told, 
"  has  no  opportunity  to  observe  or  participate  in 
primitive  forms  of  industrial  activity  and  there- 
fore understands  nothing  that  is  going  on  around 
him."  Carpet  sweepers  conceal  what  the  broom 
revealed ;  the  machines  used  in  laundry  work  hide 
the  actual  process  of  cleansing;  the  sewing  ma- 
chine bars  acquaintance  with  needle  and  thread; 
spindle  and  distaff  are  instruments  unknown. 
The  homemade  candle  has  yielded  to  the  electric 
light.  Vehicles  are  decreasingly  moved  by  ani- 
mals and  increasingly  moved  by  invisible  forces. 
In  short,  nothing  is  done  in  the  direct  way  that  a 
child  can  understand.  In  virtue  of  human  inven- 
tions he  is  bom  into  a  wonder-world  and  lives  in 
a  kind  of  magic  dream.  To  dissolve  this  dream  of 
magic  is  a  prime  duty  of  education,  and  the 
method  of  accomplishing  it  is  to  repeat  the  stages 
of  the  industrial  process  from  "  the  stage  of  the 
hand,  through  that  of  the  tool,  to  that  of  the  ma- 
chine." "  The  child  who  has  traced  the  tool  from 
the  action  of  his  own  body  through  the  varied 
stages  of  its  development,  has  felt  as  he  wielded  it, 
the  rhythmic  movements  of  economical  adjust- 
ments.   He  is  now  prepared  to  see  how  the  mechan- 


258  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

ical  principles  with  which  he  became  familiar  in 
the  study  of  primitive  life  are  utilized  by  means 
of  better  appliances,  and  how  this  action  which 
has  been  rendered  rhythmical,  and  hence  auto- 
matic, may  be  handed  over  to  a  machine."  ^ 

Postponing  to  a  later  chapter  all  discussion  of 
the  proposed  evolution  of  industries  in  its  relation 
to  the  education  of  older  children,  let  us  concen- 
trate our  attention  upon  the  demand  that  little 
children  shall  repeat  the  primitive  stage  of  indus- 
trial development,  and  that  one  object  of  the  repe- 
tition is  to  deliver  them  out  of  a  world  of  magic 
into  a  world  of  comprehended  fact.  The  clear 
definition  of  a  purpose  helps  us  to  decide  our  own 
attitude  toward  it.  Let  me  be  entirely  frank,  and 
descending  at  once  to  the  final  root  of  difference 
between  the  industrial  ideal  and  the  ideal  of  the 
Froebelian  Kindergarten,  confess  that  I  for  one 
have  not  the  least  desire  to  dissolve  the  dream  of 
wonder  in  which  young  children  live.  "  To  the 
child,"  says  a  thoughtful  essayist,  "  the  tree  and 
the  lamp-post  are  as  natural  and  as  artificial  as 
each  other,  or  rather  neither  of  them  is  natural 
but  both  are  supernatural.  For  both  are  splendid 
and  unexplained.  The  flower  with  which  God 
crowns  the  one  and  the  flame  with  which  Sam  the 
lamplighter  crowns  the  other  are  equally  of  the 

•  The  Place  of  Industries  in  Elementary  Education,  pp. 
170,  171, 


THE   INDUSTRIAL   PROGRAMME  259 

gold  of  fairy  land."  ^  Far  be  it  from  me  to  in- 
vade this  realm  of  miracles.  Childhood  is  the  age 
of  dreams  and  one  of  the  greatest  of  educational 
offenses  is  to  waken~p?einaturelj  the  dreaming 
soul. 

The  method  called  forth  by  the  industrial  ideal 
involves  a  persistent  and  exclusive  appeal  to  the 
understanding  and  thereby  condemns  itself.  The 
reader  will  doubtless  have  observed  in  the  potato 
programme  the  careful  attention  given  to  the  con- 
nection between  potatoes,  starch,  and  laundry 
work.  In  another  programme  by  the  same  kin- 
dergartner  a  similar  connection  is  made  between 
com,  corn-meal,  and  cooking.  Children  are  sent 
to  search  for  flat  stones;  between  these  stones  the 
corn  is  ground ;  finally,  a  tripod  is  set  up  and 
mush  is  cooked.  It  is  conceivable  that  each  house- 
hold industry  might  be  illustrated  in  similar  f  ash^ 
ion  and  doubtless  such  illustration  would  conduce 
to  its  better  understanding.  The  important  ques- 
tions to  consider,  however,  are  the  value  of  this 
result ;  the  relative  value  of  other  educational  aims 
which  must  be  neglected  if  this  one  be  made  para- 
mount, and  finally,  the  adaptation  of  this  particu- 
lar form  of  education  to  the  stage  of  development 
represented  by  children  between  the  ages  of  four 
and  six. 

The  potato  programme  must  not  be  dismissed 

» Heretics,  Chesterton. 


260  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

until  the  reader  has  become  aware  of  its  labored 
attempt  to  justify  all  exercises  by  the  criterion  of 
immediate  utility.  Potatoes  are  dug,  loaded  on 
wagons,  and  carried  to  the  cellar  of  a  chosen 
beneficiary.  They  are  boiled  for  a  family  lunch 
and  made  into  pancakes  as  a  surprise  to  the  kin- 
dergartner.  Starch  is  made  for  use  when  the  chil- 
dren wash  their  doll's  clothes.  This  programme, 
however,  covers  only  an  hour  of  the  time  spent 
daily  in  the  kindergarten,  and  the  question  arises 
whether  during  the  remaining  period  purpose  and 
prose  make  way  for  play  and  poetry.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  as  to  the  answer  which  industrial 
kiudergartners  make  to  this  question.  Alike  in 
their  writings  and  through  their  practice  they  in- 
sist that  every  exercise  shall  have  some  functional 
value,  or  in  other  words,  that  it  shall  subserve 
some  immediate  and  conscious  purpose.  Children 
make  pumpkin  pie  for  Thanksgiving;  pop  corn 
for  the  Christmas  tree ;  make  jelly  for  a  sick  play- 
mate. They  wash  and  iron  their  own  dusters, 
towels,  and  aprons;  color  the  raffia  to  be  used  in 
weaving;  make  toys  they  themselves  want,  or 
utensils  to  be  employed  in  household  work.  Add- 
ing the  time  required  for  constructive  exercises  to 
the  time  required  for  gardening  and  household  in- 
dustries, reserving  a  half  hour  for  circle  games  or 
their  substitute,  and  allowing  a  brief  period  for 
talk   or  story,   the   entire  three   hours   the   child 


THE   INDUSTRIAL   PROGRAMME  261 

spends    in    the    kindergarten   are   filled   to    over- 
flowing, n 

In  order  that  we  may  understand  how  radical 
is  the  change  wrought  by  the  industrial  ideal  in 
the  form  of  kindergarten  activity,  it  is  necessary 
that  we  should  contrast  the  constructive  work  it  ^ 
calls  forth  with  the  Froebelian  gift  and  occupation 
exercises.  The  character  and  value  of  such  con- 
structive work  is  explained  by  Miss  Patty  S.  Hill 
in  the  following  passage  from  an  article  on  the  Re- 
lations of  the  Kindergarten  and  the  Elementary 
School  as  illustrated  in  their  exhibits.* 

One  can  but  be  impressed  with  the  similarity  in  the 
results  exhibited  from  kindergartens  and  lower  grades. 
We  are  tempted  to  criticise  this  until  we  read  the 
grade  child's  account  of  what  he  has  done,  and  find 
that  though  the  manual  products  are  similar,  the  in- 
tellectual content  in  each  case  is  entirely  different. 
For  example,  we  see  similar  cardboard  and  wooden 
hexes  and  trays  in  exhibits  all  the  way  from  the  kin- 
dergarten  to  the  first  grade,  their  educational  value 
in  each  grade  depending  upon  the  degree  of  work  done 
hy  and  for  the  child,  the  amount  of  originality,  prep- 
aration of  raw  material,  conscious  measurement,  etc., 
demanded.  For  example,  here  is  a  written  record  ac- 
companying a  simple  cardboard  tray  with  careful 
drawings  of  the  same,  made  by  a  ten-year-old  fourth- 
grade  child.     She  writes: 

"I  have  made  this  cardboard  tray  in  school.     The 

«  Kindergarten  Magazine,  October,  1904.     (Italics  mine.) 


262  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

material  was  seven  inches  square  when  I  cut  it,  which 
made  forty-nine  square  inches.  I  had  to  use  very 
careful  measurements  to  get  it  exact,  because  it  is 
very  expensive  material  and  we  have  to  try  not  to 
waste  it.  When  we  fold  it  the  bottom  is  three  inches 
square  and  one  inch  deep  and  it  contains  nine  cubic 
inches.  We  had  to  score  some  lines  to  turn  it  over  to 
make  it  the  shape  of  a  box.  Its  color  is  green  and  it 
looks  very  pretty.  I  am  going  to  use  it  to  put  my  hair 
ribbons  in.  They  will  just  about  fit  in  the  box,  if  I 
fold  them  carefully,  and  it  is  going  to  come  very 
handy  to  me." 

If  the  kindergarten  child  had  made  this  same  ob- 
ject, the  conscious  measurement  would  have  been 
thought  out  by  the  teacher.  She  would  have  prepared 
the  material  and  thought  out  the  completed  object, 
the  kindergarten  child  prohahly  originating  the  meth- 
od of  securing  this  result  with  the  carefully  prepared 
materials  placed  before  him.  The  prepared  material 
often  hints  and  suggests  processes  of  construction  to 
the  kindergarten  child.  At  first  glance  this  seems 
quite  limiting  to  the  creativity  and  originality  of  the 
kindergarten  child,  but  a  deeper  study  convinces-  one 
that  even  the  discovery  of  processes  of  making  objects 
which  have  been  planned  by  the  teacher  demands 
quite  good  ingenuity  and  originality  from  a  little 
child. 

The  gist  of  this  statement  is  that  children  may 
be  educated  by  doing  the  same  things  all  the  way 
from  the  kindergarten  to  the  first  grade,  the  edu- 
cative process  consisting  in  decreasing  the  amount 
of  work  done  for  the  pupil  and  increasing  the 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  263 

amount  done  by  him.  It  seems  a  rather  monoto- 
nous and  dreary  plan  of  development.  We  may 
grant  the  value  of  a  reasonable  amount  of  con- 
structive work  when  children  are  sufficiently  ma- 
ture to  conceive  a  product,  prepare  material  and 
make  accurate  measurements,  but  it  is  beyond 
dispute  that  the  traditional  exercises  of  the  kin- 
dergarten are  far  better  for  the  little  child  than 
constructive  work,  wherein  he  confessedly  carries 
out  a  plan  not  his  own  with  material  prepared  by 
his  teacher. 

The  method  of  Froebel  follows  the  order  of  psy- 
chologic development,  and  provides  for  an  ascent 
of  activity  from  physical  movement,  through  sym- 
bolic representation  and  experimental  arrange- 
ments with  unforeseen  results  to  what  may  be 
fairly  defined  as  free  creation.  The  little  child 
begins  by  rolling,  swinging,  bouncing,  whirling, 
and  spinning  his  ball,  and  by  swinging  and  spin- 
ning his  sphere,  cube,  and  cylinder.  His  pleasure 
in  the  first  instance  is  simply  in  what  he  is  doing. 
Soon,  however,  his  rolling  ball  suggests  a  wheel,  his 
swinging  ball  a  flying  bird,  and  cubes  and  cylin- 
ders begin  to  be  not  only  themselves  but  the  mani- 
fold objects  to  which  their  forms  bear  crude  resem- 
blance. Receiving  the  third  gift  the  child  is  con- 
tent for  a  time  to  pile  its  eight  cubes  in  different 
ways  or  arrange  them  in  rows  of  different  kinds. 
He  can  scarcely  arrange  them  in  any  way  without 


264  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

their  taking  forms  which  will  suggest  some  object 
he  has  seen.  If  he  piles  them  one  above  the  other 
a  word  from  the  kindergartner  opens  his  eyes  to 
see  in  the  unsought  result  of  his  activity  a  tree, 
a  tower,  a  telegraph  pole,  or  a  lamp-post.  If  he 
arranges  them  side  by  side,  he  is  confronted  with 
a  wall,  if  in  two  parallel  rows,  behold  the  railroad  ! 
The  change  of  a  single  block  transforms  one  of  his 
rails  into  a  short  train  of  cars  and  quickly  the 
other  rail  is  added  to  increase  its  length.  Having, 
as  it  were,  reached  these  results  accidentally  the 
child  next  directly  aims  to  reproduce  them,  and 
thus  through  the  suggestiveness  of  his  material  is 
helped  to  take  the  step  from  experimental  arrange- 
ment to  conscious  production.  The  fact  that  while 
intent  only  on  arranging  his  blocks  he  produced 
an  object  leads  him  to  observe  this  object  more 
carefully  in  order  to  detect  its  possible  transfor- 
mation into  some  other  object.  Through  this  mu- 
tual reaction  of  process  and  product  he  evolves  a 
series  of  forms.  The  fourth,  fifth,  and  sixth  gifts 
offer  him  a  larger  amount  and  greater  variety  of 
material.  In  the  use  of  the  fifth  and  sixth  gifts, 
moreover,  attention  is  transferred  from  the  change 
of  one  object  into  another  to  changes  within  the 
object  itself.  The  child  now  looks  at  his  dwelling 
house  or  church  to  see  how  it  might  be  improved 
and  through  a  variety  of  experimental  chrnges 
clarifies   his   own   ideas.      Having   attained   this 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  265 

stage  of  development  he  is  prepared  for  the  tran- 
sition from  play  to  work.  The  stages  of  his  ascent 
have  been  from  physical  movement,  through  sym- 
bolic representation,  experimental  arrangement, 
reproduced  result,  free  creation,  serial  evolution, 
to  the  progressive  transformation  of  a  single  ob- 
ject so  that  it  may  more  adequately  correspond 
with  a  self-defining  ideal.  To  expect  of  little  chil- 
dren that  they  should  clearly  image  an  object  and 
go  to  work  and  make  that  and  nothing  else  is  to 
expect  an  impossibility.  Clear  images  are  created 
through  the  interaction  of  process  and  product. 

Omitting  the  first  two  stages  which  belong  to 
the  period  of  infancy  the  method  of  development 
followed  with  the  kindergarten  gifts  is  repeated 
in  the  use  of  the  occupations.  In  weaving,  for 
example,  the  child  begins  with  simple  combina- 
tions of  number;  discovers  patterns  as  the  result 
of  this  combination  and  thereafter  through  the 
reciprocal  influence  of  pattern  and  numerical  ar- 
rangement creates  interesting  and  beautiful  de- 
signs. In  folding  the  beginning  is  made  by  creas- 
ing and  bending  paper  in  different  ways;  these 
creases  and  bends  suggest  simple  objects  and 
finally  the  child  folds  with  intention  to  make  ob- 
jects. Further  illustration  is  superfluous,  and  it 
is  hoped  that  the  reader  will  have  observed  how 
exa<*tly  Froebel's  genetic  developing  method  cor- 
responds with  the  spontaneous  movement  of  the 


266  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

child's  mind  as  shown  in  the  play  of  Professor 
Baldwin's  little  girl  with  her  blocks.  The  many, 
and  I  hasten  to  add,  the  just  criticisms  made 
against  the  practice  of  Froebelian  kindergartners 
arose  from  the  fact  that  ascent  in  evolutionary 
processes  was  too  swift,  and  that  this  error  some- 
times led  to  the  imposition  of  fixed  series  in  lieu 
of  the  free  production  by  children  of  different 
series.  For  many  years  this  error  has  been  rec- 
ognized, confessed,  and  lamented.  It  is,  however, 
one  thing  to  renounce  an  error  in  practice  and 
quite  another  thing  to  throw  away  a  true  prin- 
ciple because  it  has  been  mistakenly  applied. 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  chiefly  that  type 
of  exercise  known  in  the  kindergarten  as  "  making 
forms  of  life."  Brief  attention  must  now  be  given 
to  forms  of  beauty.  In  the  Froebelian  kinder- 
garten these  forms  are  the  outcome  of  an  effort  to 
make  a  concrete  genetic  development  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  design.  They  begin  with  arrangements 
in  which  simple  elements  are  repeated  and  ad- 
vance to  the  evolution  of  symmetric  figures 
through  application  of  the  principle  of  contrast. 
They  presuppose  the  theory  explained  in  the  sec- 
ond chapter  of  this  book,  that  "  art  is  play  under 
the  influence  of  the  principle  of  order."  ^     They 

»  The  Fine  Arts,  G.  Baldwin  Brown,  p.  16.  A  more  adequate 
statement  by  the  same  author  is  as  follows: 

"On  every  grade  of  his  being  man  possesses  an  ideal,  self- 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  267 

further  assume  that  this  principle  of  order  is  na- 
tive to  the  human  mind  and  expresses  its  constitu- 
tion and  that  for  this  reason  both  primitive  men 
and  little  children  seek  spontaneously  to  make  pat- 
terns by  the  rhythmic  repetition  of  simple  ele- 
ments and  to  create  symmetric  figures. 

It  may  be  cheerfully  conceded  that  in  order  to 
realize  the  ideal  toward  which  forms  of  beauty 
aim  Froebelian  kindergartners  need  more  knowl- 
edge and  appreciation  of  art  than  they  possess. 
Many  of  them  are  conscious  of  defect  and  are 
striving  to  overcome  it.  But  their  own  insuffi- 
ciency does  not  invalidate  their  argument  and 
the  points  for  which  they  contend  are  that  there 
should  be  a  genetic  development  of  the  principles 
of  design ;  that  the  traditional  material  of  the  kin- 
dergarten is  the  best  thus  far  offered  for  this  pur- 
pose ;  and  that  by  means  of  that  peculiar  Froebe- 
lian device  the  mediation  of  opposites,  little 
children  are  enabled  to  satisfy  far  more  com- 
pletely than  is  possible  to  their  unaided  might  the 
deep  human  impulses  of  creation  and  transfor- 
mation. 

determined  life  existing  side  by  side  with,  but  apart  from  this 
Hfe  as  conditioned  by  material  needs.  This  life  expresses 
itself  in  and  is  nourished  by  various  forms  of  free  and  spontane- 
ous expression  and  action,  which  on  the  lower  grades  of  being 
may  be  termed  simple  play  but  on  the  higher  grades  take  the 
Bha|>e  of  that  rational  and  significant  play  resulting  in  art." 
p.  9. 


268  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

It  -would  be  going  too  far  to  say  that  industrial 
kindergartners  entirely  repudiate  the  idea  of  a 
genetic  development  of  design.  It  is,  however, 
undeniable  that  their  insistence  upon  functional 
values  makes  such  a  development  impossible.  If 
children  must  always  make  designs  as  ornaments 
for  some  previously  constructed  useful  object, 
there  will  be  scant  time  for  the  evolution  of  rhyth- 
mic patterns  or  symmetric  figures.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  the  industrial  ideal  practically  eliminates 
forms  of  beauty  and  as  the  outcome  of  such  elimi- 
nation banishes  from  the  kindergarten  the  surface 
and  linear  gifts;  substitutes  plain  sewing  and 
weaving  for  the  pattern  creating  exercises  of  IFroe- 
-bel;  minimizes  the  production  of  symmetric  fig- 
ures in  paper  folding  and  cutting,  and  places  the 
accent  of  the  former  occupation  upon  constructing 
useful  objects  and  the  accent  of  the  latter  upon 
forms  of  life  sometimes  cut  freely  and  sometimes 
cut  by  following  outlines  drawn  by  the  kinder- 
gartner. 

The  contrasting  methods  advocated  by  Indus- 
trial and  Frobelian  kindergartners  indicate  that 
one  practical  issue  between  them  is  to  be  found  in 
the  relative  stress  which  they  respectively  place 
upon  utilitarian  and  aesthetic  ideals.  Since  the 
majority  of  men  must  depend  upon  manual  skill 
for  a  livelihood  one  duty  of  education  is  to  pre- 
pare them  for  the  practical  arts  by  early  training 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  269 

of  the  important  muscles  of  the  body  and  by  the 
cultivation  of  skill  of  hand  and  accuracy  of  eye. 
Conversely  emphasis  upon  the  craftsman  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  man  is  destructive  of  the  goal  of  edu- 
cation, which  is  the  emancipation  of  the  individ- 
ual from  the  tyranny  of  his  natural  and  petty 
self  through  the  revelation  of  his  ideal  selfhood. 
For  this  reason  Froebelian  kindergartners  deplore 
the  tendency  to  make  industrial  aims  paramount 
in  education  and  believe  that  the  accent  of  the 
kindergarten  should  be  placed  upon  the  beautiful 
rather  than  the  useful,  upon  the  embryo  artist 
rather  than  the  embryo  artisan.  For  American 
children  heightened  accent  upon  the  fine  arts  is 
especially  important.  Critics  of  America  are  con- 
stantly pointing  out  the  fact  "  that  her  unparal- 
leled achievement  in  the  practical  arts  has  not 
been  accompanied  by  any  serious  contribution  to 
literature  and  art."  She  produces  great  inventors 
and  great  industrial  kings,  but  she  does  not  pro- 
duce great  poets,  great  sculptors,  great  painters, 
great  scientists,  or  great  philosophers.  Industrial 
ideals  dominate  her  mind  and  compel  her  ener- 
gies, and  she  seems  so  increasingly  given  over  to 
the  pursuit  of  wealth  and  power  that  one  thought- 
ful observer  hesitates  not  to  affirm  that  "  her  soul 
is  tending  to  atrophy  and  decay  and  that  she  is 
threatened  with  the  danger  of  producing  men  who 
are  not   spirits   but   only   intelligent   machines." 


270  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Is  it  not  therefore  both  wrong  and  dangerous  to 
increase  the  sway  of  utilitarian  motives  by  making 
immediate  utility  our  standard  of  value  in  any 
grade  of  education  ? 

Deeper  than  the  issue  between  utilitarian  and 
a?sthetic  ideals  is  the  psychologic  issue  with  regard 
to  the  order  of  mental  development.  It  is  claimed 
that  historically  industry  is  the  fountain  source  of 
art.  It  is  also  urged  that  children  must  have  a  mo- 
tive for  activity,  and  that  the  image  of  a  product 
is  necessary  to  stimulate  interest  in  a  creative 
process.  In  direct  contradiction  of  the  former 
claims  Froebelian  kindergartners  believe  that  his- 
torically art  preceded  production  for  use  and  play 
preceded  art;  that  in  the  development  of  the  in- 
dividual this  order  is  repeated  and  that,  in  virtue 
of  the  revelations  of  phylogeny  and  ontogeny,  edu- 
cation should  begin  with  self-expressive  activity 
and  advance  to  self-expression  controlled  by  the 
principle  of  order.  In  opposition  to  the  latter 
claims  they  insist  that  children  delight  in  doing 
for  the  sake  of  doing  and  need  no  motive  for  activ- 
ity save  activity  itself.  The  boy  who  spins  tops 
and  bounces  balls  has  no  thought  of  ulterior  con- 
sequences from  his  play.  The  imitation  of  adult 
deeds  is  made  by  children  with  no  conscious  pur- 
pose. Building,  drawing,  painting,  modeling  may 
be  begun  with  some  thought  of  their  result  but 
alike  with  the  artist  and  the  child  there  is  a  con- 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  271 

stant  tendency  to  forget  tlie  outcome  of  creative 
action  in  the  joy  of  creating.  To  return  once  more 
to  the  procreant  thought  of  this  chapter  and  to 
the  final  issue  between  Industrial  and  Froebelian 
kindergartners  whenever  it  is  claimed  that  activity 
needs  an  extraneous  motive,  and  when  interest  in 
a  product  is  substituted  for  delight  in  a  process 
the  form  of  play  yields  to  the  form  pf  work.  To 
give  work  "  the  right  of  way  "  in  early  childhood 
is  either  to  ignore  or  deny  the  primary  revelation 
of  genetic  psychology. 

The  reaction  of  the  industrial  ideal  upon  kin- 
dergarten games  is  scarcely  less  marked  than  its 
reaction  upon  the  gifts  and  occupations.  The 
most  noticeable  tendencies  of  this  reaction  are  to 
break  up  the  circle  into  small  groups ;  to  encourage 
the  children  in  these  groups  to  make  their  own 
dramatizations;  to  discourage  the  representation 
of  any  but  human  activities  and  among  human 
activities  to  give  preference  to  those  that  are  in- 
dustrial in  type.  In  brief,  just  as  the  work  sub- 
stituted for  gift  and  occupation  exercises  circles 
around  human  industries  so  the  interest  of  dra- 
matic games  is  to  center  in  portraying  these  in- 
dustries. 

Since  what  the  child  imitates  he  becomes  and 

what  he  becomes  he  sees  in  the  world  around  him, 

it  is  evident  that  bv  unduly  restricting  the  range 
20 


272  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

of  his  imitations  we  conspire  to  create  in  him  a 
narrow  and  rigid  individuality  and  a  limited  out- 
look. The  Froebelian  kindergarten  portrays  the 
activities  of  the  family  and  civil  society,  but  it 
also  strives  to  waken  the  love  of  country,  to 
quicken  some  prescient  feeling  of  the  meaning  of 
religion  and  to  suggest  those  wonderful  analogies 
through  which  nature  becomes  the  poetic  inter- 
preter of  human  experience.  Through  these 
varied  representations  it  aids  children  to  create  a 
large,  generous,  and  plastic  selfhood  and  thereby 
capacitates  them  for  a  sympathetic  appreciation 
of  the  manifold  aspects  of  life.  "  Above  all 
things,"  says  that  penetrating  student  of  child  life, 
Professor  Baldwin,  "  Above  all  things,  fathers, 
mothers,  teachers,  elders,  give  the  children  room. 
^  They  need  all  they  can  get  and  their  personalities 
will  grow  to  fill  it.  .  .  .  .Fill  their  lives  with  va- 
riety, variety  is  the  soul  of  originality  and  its  only 
f  source  of  supply."  ^ 
The  two  most  characteristic  demands  of  the  in- 
dustrial programme  are  that  children  shall  repeat 
primitive  industries  and  shall  be  told  stories  about 
the  people  who  originally  created  these  industries. 
We  have  considered  the  former  demand  and  dis- 
covered that  by  inducing  a  secession  from  play  to 
-work  it  not  only  revolutionizes  the  kindergarten 
but  puts  it  out  of  existence.  We  must  now  direct 
»  Mental  Development,  James  Mark  Baldwin,  pp.  359,  360. 


THE   INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  273 

our  attention  to  the  second  demand,  and  I  shall 
attempt  to  show  that  it  leads  to  the  substitution  of 
manufactured  stories  prosaic  in  their  content  and 
hortatory  in  their  tone  for  the  fairy  tales  and 
myths  which  are  the  priceless  legacy  of  the  child- 
hood of  the  race  to  the  children  of  all  ages. 

"  The  function  of  the  story,"  says  Miss  Dopp, 
"  is  to  supply  the  child  with  racial  experiences 
that  will  enrich  his  own  more  narrow  personal  ex- 
perience." Since  such  stories  do  not  exist  they 
must  be  written.  Those  which  follow  are  quoted 
from  Miss  Dopp's  book,  The  Tree-dwellers.^ 


A   STOEY   OF   LONG   AGO 

This  is  a  story  of  long  ago. 

It  will  tell  you  of  the  first  people  we  know  anything 
about. 

It  will  tell  you  how  they  lived  before  they  had  fire. 

It  will  tell  you  how  they  worked  before  they  had 
tools. 

Many  wild  beasts  lived  then. 

They  were  fierce  and  strong. 

All  the  people  feared  them. 

The  cave-bear  could  strike  with  his  big  paws. 

The  tiger  could  tear  with  his  sharp  teeth. 

The  rhinoceros  could  trample  one  under  his  feet. 

Each  animal  knew  how  to  do  one  thing  well. 

•  These  stories  are  written  for  children  of  six  and  a  half  or 
seven  years  of  age. 


274  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

But  the  people  could  do  a  great  many  things. 

They  could  remember,  too,  what  had  happened  be- 
fore. 

They  learned  to  profit  by  their  mistakes. 

You  will  learn  how  they  became  brave  and  strong. 

You  will  learn  how  they  used  their  bodies  and  minds. 

They  began  the  work  we  are  doing  to-day. 

They  took  the  first  steps. 

People  who  lived  after  them  were  able  to  do  a  little 
more. 

The  next  people  could  do  still  more. 

Many  people  have  lived  and  worked  since  then. 

The  work  they  have  done  helps  us  to-day. 

We  have  something  to  do,  too. 

We  can  do  our  part  better  if  we  know  what  others 
have  done. 

We  can  do  it  better  if  we  learn  to  use  our  hands. 

We  can  do  it  better  if  we  learn  to  use  our  minds. 

That  is  why  we  have   this   little   hook. 

n 

THINGS   TO   THINK   ABOUT 

What  do  you  need  in  order  to  live? 

What  do  you  think  that  the  tree-dwellers  needed? 

SHARPTOOTH 

Sharptooth  was  a  tree-dweller. 

She  lived  a  long,  long  time  ago. 

She  did  not  have  any  home. 

Nobody  had  a  home  then. 

People  wandered  from  place  to  place. 

They  had  no  shelter  except  the  trees. 

Each  night  Sharptooth  slept  in  the  branches. 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  276 

Each  day  she  hunted  for  something  to  eat. 

Sometimes  she  was  very  hungry. 

She  had  hard  work  to  find  enough  food. 

She  could  not  go  to  a  store  to  buy  it. 

There  were  no  stores  then.  ' 

She  could  not  buy  food  of  a  fanner. 

There  were  no  farmers  then. 

All  the  plants  were  growing  wild. 

All  the  animals  were  wild,  too. 

Sharptooth  was  afraid  of  them. 

That  is  why  she  climbed  the  trees. 

ALONE   ON   THE   WOODED   HILLS 

Although  Bodo  *  was  glad  to  take  care  of  himaelf, 
he  often  wished  that  his  mother  were  near. 

Sometimes  he  called  to  her. 

When  she  heard  his  call  she  would  answer  him. 

Then  he  would  swing  on  the  branches  until  he  found 
her. 

But  sometimes  she  was  too  far  away  to  hear. 

Then  he  listened  in  vain  for  her  answering  call. 

Sometimes  it  was  hard  work  to  keep  back  the  tears. 

Once  he  sobbed  so  loud  that  a  sleepy  bear  heard 
him. 

The  bear  started  up  and  began  to  growl. 

Bodo  hid  in  the  branches  of  a  tall  tree. 

He  stayed  there  until  the  bear  went  away. 

Then  he  was  very  hungry. 

As  he  started  out  to  find  something  to  eat,  he  heard 
a  rustling  among  the  branches. 

He  listened. 

Bodo  hoped  that  his  mother  was  coming. 

»  Bodo  is  Sharptooth's  little  son. 


276  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

But  it  was  only  a  boy  who  was  hunting  birds'  eggs. 

Bodo  watched  him  climb  among  the  branches. 

He  watched  him  suck  the  eggs  that  he  found. 

How  he  wished  that  he  might  find  some  eggs  I 

He  began  to  look  for  some. 

In  a  moment  he  saw  a  bird's  nest  above  him. 

He  climbed  up  the  branch  and  peeped  into  the  nest. 

There  were  three  beautiful  eggs. 

His  eyes  danced  with  joy. 

He  sucked  the  eggs. 

Then  he  smacked  his  lips  and  hunted  for  more. 

In  these  stories  everything  is  explained  to  the 
child.  He  is  even  told  why  they  were  written. 
The  tacit  assumption  is  that  education  must  appeal 
primarily  and  persistently  to  the  prosaic  under- 
standing. Finally,  an  explicit  statement  of  this  as- 
sumption is  made  in  the  author's  comments  upon 
the  story  of  "  Bodo  Alone  on  the  Wooded  Hills." 

The  portrayal  of  the  situation  which  caused  our 
early  forefathers  to  rob  birds'  nests  and  kill  young 
animals  will  no  doubt  shock  the  sentimentalist  who 
orders  eggs  or  veal  as  a  matter  of  course.  There 
might  be  good  ground  for  his  feeling  were  there  not 
present  in  the  child  the  instinct  to  do  similar  deeds 
even  though  living  under  social  conditions  that  do 
not  justify  such  acts.  Anyone  who  will  take  the 
trouble  to  recall  his  own  childhood,  or  to  make  the 
acquaintance  of  children  of  six  and  a  half  or  seven 
years,  will  realize  that  such  instincts  are  present,  and 
that  they  must  find  expression  in  one  form  or  another. 
Is  it  wise  to  ignore  the  facts  of  the  case  and  allow 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  277 

the  child  to  form  the  habit  of  gratifying  his  blind 
instincts,  or  shall  we  recognize  the  situation  and  meet 
it  with  all  the  wisdom  at  our  command  ?  Is  it  not  the 
better  plan  to  tell  the  child  frankly  of  the  way  in 
which  people  lived  at  the  time  when  they  did  what 
he  would  like  to  do  now,  and  lead  him  to  discover  the 
changes  that  have  taken  place  that  lead  us  to  disap- 
prove of  actions  which,  under  different  conditions, 
were  considered  good?^ 

It  is  a  bad  fault  of  these  stories  that  they  ex- 
plain everything  they  tell.  It  is  a  worse  fault  that 
they  leave  so  much  untold.  Sharptooth  had  many 
experiences  which  her  biographer  forgets.  There 
were  nights  when  perched  in  the  trees  she  looked 
with  wonder  at  the  sky  and  stars.  There  were 
days  when  something  in  her  stirred  uneasily  after 
she  had  given  Bodo  an  angry  whack.  One  sum- 
mer morning  while  washing  him  in  the  river  she 
started  at  his  image  in  the  water  and  was  shaken 
by  a  strange  surmise  that  the  image  near  his  might 
be  her  own.  Something  more  than  a  reverberation 
thrilled  her  when  from  the  distance  there  came  to 
her  the  echo  of  her  own  voice.  There  were  hours 
of  danger,  nights  of  lonely  suffering,  seasons  of 
death  when  the  mystery  which  encompasses  all 
life  folded  her  in  its  embrace  and  quickened  her 
soul  with  prescient  forebodings.  Being  human  she 
had  the  "  blank  misgivings  of  a  creature  moving 

« The  Tree-dwellers,  p.  133.    (Italics  mine.) 


278  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

about  in  worlds  not  realized."  After  a  while  the 
faint  stirrings  of  her  spirit  grew  stronger  in  her 
descendants  and  began  to  seek  expression  in  story. 
Men  dreamed  of  all-conquering  heroes  and  world- 
exploring  wanderers;  of  ascents  into  the  sky  and 
descents  into  depths  of  the  earth ;  of  a  golden  age 
when  secure  from  danger  and  blessed  with  plenty 
innocent  humanity  lived  in  peace  and  joy.  We 
dream  to-day  of  our  owti  planet  subdued,  trans- 
formed, and  idealized;  of  future  converse  with 
intelligent  spirits  in  other  w^orlds ;  of  "  a  cosmic 
community  living  in  glad  obedience  to  a  perfect 
moral  law."  These  dreams  are  our  greatest  re- 
alities because  they  are  the  sacred  promises  of  a 
God  whose  earthly  sanctuary  is  the  human  soul. 
The  little  child  dreams  as  we  do  because  he,  too, 
is  an  original  fountain  of  self-creating  energy,  and 
from  the  beginning  of  life  is  haunted  by  presenti- 
ments of  his  nature  and  destiny.  His  feeble 
power  of  divination  needs  nurture  from  the  ora- 
cles of  human  imagination.  Without  fairy  tales, 
myths,  legends,  fables,  poetry,  the  eyes  of  the  hu- 
man spirit  will  grow  blind.  When  this  calamity 
happens  to  the  children  and  youth  of  a  nation  the 
fate  of  that  nation  is  sealed.  "  Where  there  is  no 
vision  the  people  perisheth." 

The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  accomplished  if 
the  reader  has  been  helped  to  realize  afresh  "  the 


THE  INDUSTRIAL  PROGRAMME  279 

deep  meaning  which  lies  hid  in  childish  play." 
Through  play  we  make  ourselves.  In  work  we  use 
ourselves.  The  inspirer  of  play  is  poetic  imagina- 
tion; the  overseer  of  work  is  the  prosaic  under- 
standing. Bold,  free,  adventurous,  romantic — 
imagination  scales  the  heights  and  descends  into 
the  depths  of  our  being.  Cautious,  deliberate,  pa- 
tient— understanding  sets  its  limited  and  imme- 
diate end,  and  to  this  end  adapts  its  means. 
Through  the  power  of  imagination  we  roam 
through  space  and  time,  assume  all  characters, 
enter  into  all  lives ;  share  all  passions,  sympathize 
with  all  great  ideals  and  with  wondering  minds 
approach  the  portals  of  all  mysteries.  Through 
understanding  we  decide  how  we  may  most  wisely 
meet  the  practical  emergencies  and  compulsory 
duties  of  life  and  with  firm  resolve  concentrate 
energy  to  the  accomplishment  of  specific  purposes. 
Without  the  liberating  and  expanding  activity  to 
which  imagination  invites  us,  our  thoughts  would 
have  no  range,  our  hearts  no  sympathy,  and  our 
wills  no  final  end.  Without  the  efficiency  with 
which  understanding  endows  us  and  the  consecra- 
tion for  which  work  empowers  us  our  far-faring 
thoughts  would  lose  themselves  in  the  void;  re- 
sponsive sympathies  would  fail  to  provoke  unsel- 
fish deeds,  and  the  final  aims  of  human  existence 
would  beckon  in  vain  to  our  languid  wills. 

No  thinker  who  understands  the  complemen- 


280  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

tary  roles  of  play  and  work  in  the  drama  of  hu- 
man life  will  deny  the  value  of  either  form  of  ac- 
tivity. But  no  student  of  genetic  psychology  will 
fail  to  recognize  the  priority  of  play  over  work  in 
the  order  of  development.  Of  all  children  the 
most  unchildlike  is  the  child  who  does  everything 
for  a  purpose  and  to  whom  everything  is  ex- 
plained. For  such  a  child  has  ceased  to  wonder 
and  has  forgotten  how  to  play. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  SOCIALIZATION   OF   THE   SCHOOL 

The  industrial  programme  has  arisen  in  the 
kindergarten  through  the  reaction  upon  that  insti- 
tution of  a  movement  in  general  education  whose 
avowed  aim  is  the  socialization  of  the  school.  It 
would  be  unjust  to  the  representatives  of  this 
movement  to  hold  them  responsible  either  for  the 
interpretations  which  kindergartners  have  made 
of  their  ideas  of  for  the  manner  in  which  they 
have  embodied  such  interpretations.^  On  the 
other  hand,  the  attempted  revolution  of  kindergar- 
ten practice  described  in  the  foregoing  chapter 
cannot  be  understood  until  it  is  connected  with 

>  In  this  connection  I  desire  to  say  that  I  ventured  to  quote 
from  Miss  Dopp  in  the  preceding  chapter  because  so  far  as  I 
am  aware  she  is  the  only  representative  of  the  industrial  ideal 
who  has  attempted  to  apply  that  ideal  in  detail  to  the  kinder- 
garten. Her  book  has  undoubtedly  had  much  influence  in 
shaping  the  practice  of  industrial  kindergartners.  On  the 
other  hand  the  industrial  ideal,  as  carried  out  in  many  kinder- 
gartens, betrays  the  conspiring  influence  of  the  Pestalozzi- 
Froebel  House  of  Berlin.  So  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge  this 
latter  influence  was  paramount  in  the  programme  cited  in 
Chapter  IX. 

281 


282  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  greater  revolution  of  which  it  is  a  phase.  In 
this  chapter,  therefore,  I  shall  endeavor  to  present 
the  ideal  of  school  socialization  so  far  as  possible 
in  the  words  of  its  most  eminent  representative, 
and  in  the  following  chapter  shall  discuss  its 
merits. 

The  purpose  of  the  larger  educational  move- 
ment to  which  I  have  referred  is  to  so  reorganize 
the  school  that  "  its  standards  of  value  may  be 
determined  by  functional  relation  to  social  life." 
The  value  of  each  particular  study  and  the  motives 
in  connection  with  which  each  study  shall  be  pre- 
sented are  to  be  measured  by  the  criterion  of  social 
utility.  The  school  is  or  should  be  a  typical  com- 
munity. Its  exercises  must  be  planned  to  meet 
Vommunity  needs.  This  ideal  demands  that  in 
method  accent  shall  be  placed  upon  constructive 
activities.  It  also  demands  that  ethical  character 
shall  be  developed  through  the  practical  challenge 
of  the  community  life. 

Writing  in  support  of  this  ideal  of  education 
Dr.  Dewey  makes  use  of  the  following  very  per- 
tinent illustration: 

I  am  told  that  there  is  a  swimming  school  in  the 
city  of  Chicago  where  youth  are  taught  to  swim  with- 
out going  into  the  water,  being  repeatedly  drilled  in 
the  various  movements  which  are  necessary  for  swim- 
ming. When  one  of  the  young  men  so  trained  was 
«sked  what  he  did  when  he  got  into  the  water  he 


THE   SOCIALIZATION  OF  THE  SCHOOL     283 

laconically  replied,  "  sunk."  The  story  happens  to 
be  true;  if  it  were  not  it  would  seem  to  be  a  fable 
made  expressly  for  the  purpose  of  typifying  the  pre- 
vailing status  of  the  school  as  judged  from  the  stand- 
point of  its  ethical  relation  to  society.  The  school 
cannot  be  a  preparation  for  social  life,  excepting  as  it 
reproduces  within  itself  the  typical  conditions  of  so- 
cial life.  The  school  at  present  is  engaged  largely 
upon  the  futile  task  of  Sisyphus.  It  is  endeavoring 
to  form  practically  an  intellectual  habit  in  children 
for  use  in  a  social  life  which  is,  it  would  almost  seem, 
carefully  and  purposely  kept  away  from  any  vital  con- 
tact with  the  child  who  is  thus  undergoing  training. 
X  The  only  way  to  prepare  for  social  life  is  to  engage  in 
social  life.  To  form  habits  of  social  usefulness  and 
serviceableness  apart  from  any  direct  social  need  and 
motive,  and  apart  from  any  existing  social  situation 
is,  to  the  letter,  teaching  the  child  to  swim  by  going 
through  motions  outside  of  the  water.  The  most  in- 
dispensable conditions  are  left  out  of  account,  and  the 
results  are  correspondingly  futile.* 

The  italicized  sentence  in  this  statement  throws 
into  clear  relief  the  aim  and  method  of  the  last 
attempted  reform  in  education.  The  school  is  to 
prepare  for  social  life.  The_only  way  to  prepare 
J  for  social  life  is  to  engage  in  social  life.  In  an- 
other paragraph  of  the  same  article  we  are  told 
that  "  apart  from  participation  in  social  life  the 
school  has  no  end  or  aim."     The  hope  by  which 

>  Ethical  Principles  Underlying  Education,  John  Dewey, 
pp.  13,  14.     (Italics  mine.) 


284  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

the  socialized  school  lives  is  the  regeneration  of 
our  social  order.  "  When  the  school  introduces 
and  trains  each  child  of  society  into  membership 
within  such  a  little  community,  saturating  him 
with  the  spirit  of  service,  and  providing  him  with 
the  instruments  of  effective  self-direction,  we  shall 
have  the  deepest  and  best  guarantee  of  a  larger 
society  which  is  worthy,  lovely,  and  harmonious."  ^ 
If  the  aim  of  education  be  to  prepare  for  social 
life  and  if  this  aim  can  be  realized  only  by  en- 
gaging in  social  life,  it  follows  that  the  school  must 
be  transformed  into  an  "  embryonic  yet  typical 
community."  It  is  matter  of  familiar  knowledge 
that  in  the  practical  attempts  to  realize  this  ideal 
various  forms  of  active  occupation  have  been  made 
the  "  articulating  centers  "  of  school  life.-  The 
phrase  "  articulating  centers "  is  an  important 
one,  for  it  suggests  a  connection  between  the 
method  of  the  socialized  school  and  the  core  of  in- 
terest characteristic  of  the  concentric  programme. 
The  fact  that  the  new  cores  or  articulating  centers 
are  to  be  active  occupations  points  to  an  influence 
from  the  child-study  movement  whose  most  meri- 
torious achievement  has  been  the  transfer  of  in- 
terest from  the  child  conceived  primarily  as  a 
percipient  and  assimilative  being  to  the  child  con- 
ceived primarily  as  a  self-expressing  being.     The 

'  School  and  Society,  John  Dewey,  p.  44. 
» Ibid.,  John  Dewey,  p.  28. 


THE  SOCIALIZATION   OF  THE  SCHOOL     285 

further  course  of  our  discussion  will  show  that  in 
the  concentration  of  school  exercises  around  indus- 
trial occupations  a  noteworthy  attempt  has  been 
made  to  overcome  the  anarchy  of  unguided  self- 
expression  by  relating  the  spontaneous  activities 
of  childhood  to  the  values  of  life.  Readers  of  this 
book  will  recognize  in  such  an  effort  a  rediscovery 
of  the  method  of  Froebel.  They  will  also  perceive 
that  radical  differences  in  the  application  of  the 
method  imply  different  appreciations  of  the  sev- 
eral great  human  values  and  different  conceptions 
of  the  child.  In  the  following  chapters  of  this 
book  I  shall  endeavor  to  unearth  the  root  of  these 
differences. 

Like  the  original  authors  of  the  concentric 
method  the  educators  who  seek  to  make  industrial 
occupations  the  "  articulating  centers  "  of  school 
life  justify  their  selection  of  cores  by  an  appeal 
to  the  theory  of  historic  recapitulation.  In  the 
application  of  this  theory  by  the  two  schools  of 
educators  however,  there  is  a  difference  deeper 
than  their  agreement.  It  will  be  remembered  that 
the  "  Gesinnungs-Stoff "  of  the  concentric  pro- 
gramme was  selected  from  culture  products  W 
longing  to  successive  periods  of  race  development 
which  it  was  claimed  repeat  themselves  in  the  de- 
velopment of  each  individual.  A  change  so  radi- 
cal that  it  can  only  be  described  as  a  revolution, 
was  made  when  the  industries  characteristic  of 


286  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

successive  periods  of  history  were  substituted  for 
culture  products.  The  reasons  which  it  is  claimed 
demand  such  a  substitution  are  clearly  presented 
by  Dr.  Dewey  in  his  interpretation  of  the  Culture- 
Epoch  Theory.  Quoting  the  statement  of  Pro- 
fessor Felmly  that  "  The  appropriate  food  for  each 
of  our  spontaneous  interests  is  the  mass  of  ideas 
that  engaged  the  ancestors  to  whom  the  instinctive 
interest  is  due,"  he  suggests  that  "  the  term  activi- 
ties be  substituted  for  the  term  ideas,  or  better  yet, 
that  the  two  terms  be  conjoined."  ^  Commenting 
upon  the  amended  statement  he  writes  as  follows : 

Whatever  words  he  used,  the  point  is  that  the  in- 
terest and  instinct  correspond  not  primarily  to  the 
products  of  a  given  age,  but  to  the  psychical  condi- 
tions which  originated  those  products;  these  condi- 
tions secured  for  the  child  then  he  is  prepared  to  deal 
educatively  with  the  products.  When  the  child  is  in 
the  "  agricultural "  stage,  it  is  sheer  assumption  to 
suppose  that  his  chief  interest  is  in  the  literary  or 
institutional  products  of  that  epoch;  it  is  also  sheer 
assumption  to  suppose  that  this  agricultural  interest 
is  adequately  met  on  the  educational  side  by  allowing 
it  to  feed  at  first  on  the  cultural  products  of  this 
epoch.  It  is  an  interest  which  demands  primarily  its 
own  expression,  and  not  simply  an  acquaintance  sec- 
ond handed  with  what  that  interest  effected  at  some 
remote  period. 

>  Interpretation  of  the  Culture-Epoch  Theory,  John  Dewey, 
Second  Herbart  Year  Book,  p.  92. 


THE  SOCIALIZATION   OF  THE  SCHOOL     287 

The  agricultural  instinct  requires,  according  to 
the  true  analogy,  to  be  fed  in  just  the  same  way  in 
the  child  in  which  it  was  fed  in  the  race — by  contact 
with  the  earth  and  seed  and  air  and  sun  and  all  the 
mighty  flux  and  ebb  of  life  in  nature.  It  requires 
to  be  fed  by  knowledge  of  how  agriculture  is  now 
carried  on,  what  its  products  are,  how  these  reach  the 
market,  etc.  Then  the  child  may  be  brought  into  con- 
tact with  the  historical  cultural  products,  and  will 
have  some  "  apperceptive  organs "  for  them,  and  will 
be  able  to  use  them  vitally.  I  do  not  say  that  to  give 
him  contact  with  these  products  before  his  interests 
have  found  some  expression  of  their  own  is  to  give 
him  a  stone  instead  of  bread,  but  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  it  is  giving  him  relatively  a  toy  instead  of 
a  reality.' 

The  Ideas  which  have  created  the  last  revolu- 
tion in  education  should  now  be  clear.  The  school 
is  to  be  transformed  into  a  typical  community 
life.  The  "  articulating  centers  of  this  life  "  shall 
be  industrial  occupations.  In  connection  with 
these  occupations  the  historic  development  of  man 
is  to  be  recapitulated.  Our  next  task  is  to  apply 
this  conception  of  the  school  to  the  methods  and 
subject  matter  of  education,  for  the  claim  is  made 
that  by  its  application  to  method  we  solve  the  ques- 
tion of  school  discipline ;  by  its  application  to  the 
subject  matter  of  instruction  we  estimate  the  rela- 

•  Interpretation   of   the   Culture-Epoch    Theory,    Second 
Herbart  Year  Book,  pp.  92,  93. 
21 


288  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

tive  values  of  the  several  studies  of  the  school  cur- 
riculum. 

The  socialized  school  seeks  to  solve  the  problem 
of  discipline  by  offering  to  children  opportunity 
for  participation  in  common  productive  activities. 
Dr.  Dewey  writes: 

Order  is  simply  a  thing  which  is  relative  to  an 
end.  If  you  have  the  end  in  view  of  forty  or  fifty 
children  learning  certain  set  lessons,  your  discipline 
must  be  devoted  to  securing  that  result.  But  if  the 
end  in  view  is  the  development  of  a  spirit  of  social 
cooperation  and  community  life,  discipline  must  grow 
out  of  and  be  relative  to  this.  There  is  little  order 
of  one  sort  where  things  are  in  process  of  construc- 
tion; there  is  a  certain  disorder  in  any  busy  workshop, 
there  is  not  silence,  persons  are  not  engaged  in  main- 
taining certain  fixed  physical  postures,  their  arms  are 
not  folded,  they  are  not  holding  their  books  so  and 
BO.  They  are  doing  a  variety  of  things,  and  there  is 
the  confusion,  the  bustle  that  results  from  activity. 
But  out  of  occupation,  out  of  doing  things  that  are 
to  produce  results,  and  out  of  doing  these  in  a  social 
and  cooperative  way,  there  is  bom  a  discipline  of  its 
.  own  kind  and  type.  Our  whole  conception  of  school 
'  discipline  changes  when  we  get  this  point  of  view.  In 
critical  moments  we  all  realize  that  the  only  disci- 
pline that  stands  by  us,  the  only  training  that  becomes 
intuition,  is  that  got  through  life  itself.  That  we 
learn  from  experience  and  from  books  or  the  sayings 
of  others  only  as  they  are  related  to  experience  are  not 
mere  phrases.  But  the  school  has  been  so  set  apart, 
so  isolated  from  the  ordinary  conditions  and  motives 


THE  SOCIALIZATION   OF  THE  SCHOOL     289 

of  life,  that  the  place  where  children  are  sent  for  dis- 
cipline is  the  one  place  where  it  is  most  difficult  to 
get  experience — the  mother  of  all  discipline  worth  the 
name.  It  is  only  where  a  narrow  and  fixed  image  of 
traditional  school  discipline  dominates  that  one  is  in 
any  danger  of  overlooking  that  deeper  and  infinitely 
wider  discipline  that  comes  from  having  a  part  to  do 
in  constructive  work,  in  contributing  to  a  result 
which,  social  in  spirit,  is  none  the  less  obvious  and 
tangible  in  form,  and  hence  in  a  form  with  reference 
to  which  responsibility  may  be  exacted  and  judgment 
passed. 

The  great  thing  to  keep  in  mind  then  regarding 
the  introduction  into  the  school  of  various  forms  of 
active  occupation  is  that  through  them  the  entire 
spirit  of  the  school  is  renewed.  It  has  a  chance  to 
affiliate  itself  with  life ;  to  become  the  child's  habitat ; 
where  he  learns  through  directed  living,  instead  of 
being  only  a  place  to  learn  lessons  having  an  abstract 
and  remote  reference  to  some  possible  living  to  be 
done  in  the  future.  It  gets  the  chance  to  be  a  minia- 
ture community,  an  embryonic  society.  This  is  the 
fundamental  f act.^ 

A  wisely  directed  participation  in  industrial 
occupations  not  only  solves  the  problem  of  school 
discipline  but  makes  possible  the  unification  of 
all  school  studies.  Upon  this  subject  Dr.  Dewey 
writes  as  follows: 

The  unity  of  all  the  sciences  is  found  in  geography. 
The  significance  of  geography  is  that  it  presents  the 


>  School  and  Society,  pp.  30-32. 


J 


290  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

earth  as  the  enduring  home  of  the  occupations  of  man. 
The  world  without  its  relationship  to  human  activity 
is  less  than  a  world.  Human  industry  and  achieve- 
ment, apart  from  their  roots  in  the  earth,  are  not  even 
a  sentiment,  hardly  a  name.  The  earth  is  the  final 
source  of  all  man's  food.  It  is  his  continual  shelter 
and  protection,  the  raw  material  of  all  his  activities, 
and  the  home  to  whose  humanizing  and  idealizing  all 
his  achievement  returns.  It  is  the  great  field,  the 
great  mine,  the  great  source  of  the  energies  of  heat, 
light,  and  electricity;  the  great  scene  of  ocean,  stream, 
mountain,  and  plain,  of  which  all  our  agriculture  and 
mining  and  lumbering,  all  our  manufacturing  and 
distributing  agencies,  are  but  the  partial  elements  and 
factors,  li  is  through  occupations  determined  by  this 
environment  that  mankind  has  made  its  historical  and 
political  progress.  It  is  through  these  occupations 
that  the  intellectual  and  emotional  interpretation  of 
nature  has  been  developed,  tt  is  through  what  we 
do  in  and  with  the  world  that  we  read  its  meaning 
and  measure  its  value. 

In  educational  terms,  this  means  that  these  occu- 
pations in  the  school  shall  not  be  mere  practical  de- 
vices or  modes  of  routine  employment,  the  gaining  of 
better  technical  skill  as  cooks,  seamstresses,  or  car- 
penters, but  active  centers  of  scientific  insight  into 
natural  materials  and  processes,  points  of  departure 
whence  children  shall  he  led  out  into  a  realization  of 
the  historic  development  of  man^ 

In  illustration  of  the  method  proposed  Dr. 
Dewey  tells  how  the  occupations  of  sewing  and 

'  School  and  Society,  pp.  32,  33.     (Italics  mine.) 


THE  SOCIALIZATION  OF  THE  SCHOOL     291 

"weaving  may  actually  be  made  points  of  departure 
for  the  studies  of  history  and  science : 

The  children  are  first  given  the  raw  material,  the 
flax,  the  cotton  plant,  the  wool  as  it  comes  from  the 
back  of  the  sheep  (if  we  could  take  them  to  the  place 
where  sheep  are  sheared  so  much  the  better).  Then 
a  study  is  made  of  these  materials  from  the  standpoint 
of  their  adaptation  to  the  uses  to  which  they  may  be 
put.  For  instance,  a  comparison  of  the  cotton  fiber 
with  wool  fiber  is  made.  I  did  not  know  until  the 
children  told  me  that  the  reason  for  the  late  develop- 
ment of  the  cotton  industry  as  compared  with  the 
woolen  is  that  the  cotton  fiber  is  so  very  difficult  to 
free  by  hand  from  the  seeds.  The  children  in  one 
group  worked  thirty  minutes  freeing  cotton  fibers  from 
the  boll  and  seeds,  and  succeeded  in  getting  out  less 
than  one  ounce.  They  could  easily  believe  that  one 
person  could  only  gin  one  pound  a  day  by  hand,  and 
could  understand  why  their  ancestors  wore  woolen  in- 
stead of  cotton  clothing.  Among  other  things  dis- 
covered as  affecting  their  relative  utilities,  was  the 
shortness  of  the  cotton  fiber  as  compared  with  that  of 
wool,  the  former  being  one  tenth  of  an  inch  in  length, 
while  that  of  the  latter  is  an  inch  in  length;  also  that 
the  fibers  of  cotton  are  smooth  and  do  not  cling  to- 
gether, while  the  wool  has  a  certain  roughness  which 
makes  the  fibers  stick,  thus  assisting  the  spinning. 
The  children  worked  this  out  for  themselves  with  the 
actual  material,  aided  by  questions  and  suggestions 
from  the  teacher. 

They  then  followed  the  processes  necessary  for 
working  the  fibers  up  into  cloth.  They  reinvented 
the   first  frame   for  carding  the  wool — a   couple   of 


<^ 


292  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

boards  with  sharp  pins  in  them  for  scratching  it  out. 
They  redevised  the  simplest  process  for  spinning  the 
wool — a  pierced  stone  or  some  other  weight  through 
which  the  wool  is  passed,  and  which  as  it  is  twirled 
draws  out  the  fiber;  next  the  top,  which  was  spun  on 
the  floor,  while  the  children  kept  the  wool  in  their 
hands  until  it  was  gradually  drawn  out  and  wound 
upon  it.  Then  the  children  are  introduced  to  the  in- 
vention next  in  historic  order,  working  it  out  experi- 
mentally, thus  seeing  its  necessity  and  tracing  its  ef- 
fects, not  only  upon  that  particular  industry,  but  upon 
modes  of  social  life — in  this  way  passing  in  review 
the  entire  process  up  to  the  present  complete  loom 
and  all  that  goes  with  the  application  of  science  in  the 
use  of  our  present  available  powers.  I  need  not  speak 
of  the  science  involved  in  this — the  study  of  the  fibers ; 
of  geographical  features;  the  conditions  under  which 
raw  materials  are  grown,  the  great  centers  of  manu- 
facture and  distribution;  the  physics  involved  in  the 
machinery  of  production;  nor,  again,  of  the  historical 
side — the  influence  which  these  inventions  have  had 
upon  humanity.  You  can  concentrate  the  history  of 
all  mankind  into  the  evolution  of  the  flax,  cotton, 
and  wool  fibers  into  clothing.^ 


/  As  industrial  occupations  supply  concentration 
centers  for  history  and  science,  so  taken  in  connec- 
tion with  these  studies  they  are  indispensable  pre- 
requisites to  the  proper  appreciation  of  literature. 
This  relationship  is  clearly  brought  out  in  Dr. 

>  School  and  Society,  pp.  34-36.     (Italics  mine.) 


THE   SOCIALIZATION   OF  THE   SCHOOL     293 

Dewey's  discussion  of  myths.  "  It  seems  to  be 
assumed,"  he  writes  "  that  the  myth  is  a  primitive 
simple  product  which  the  mind  sheds  by  a  sort  of 
direct  radiation,  or  to  mix  the  metaphor,  by  spon- 
taneous combustion  termed  fancy.  And  that, 
therefore,  there  is  some  special,  almost  pre- 
ordained fitness  in  it  for  the  child.  But  naivete 
belongs  rather  to  this  view  of  the  myth  than  to 
the  myth  itself.  The  myth  is  a  complete  social 
product,  reflecting  in  itself  the  intellectual,  the 
economic  and  the  political  condition  of  a  certain 
people."  ...  It  is  "  of  permanent  value  as  a 
story  in  just  the  degree  to  which  the  child  has  been 
led  for  himself  first  to  appreciate  the  natural  facts 
and  the  social  conditions  which  are  reflected  in  it. 
If  he  has  been  led  in  his  nature  study  to  realize 
the  part  played  by  the  sun  in  the  economy  of  life, 
if  he  has  been  led  to  appreciate  the  historic  con- 
dition of  people  with  a  precarious  relationship  to 
fire,  myths  of  the  sun  and  fire  may  play  a  serious 
and  worthy  part.  Let  us  treat  the  intellectual  re- 
sources, capacities,  and  needs  of  our  children  with 
the  full  dignity  and  respect  they  deserve  and  not 
sentimentalize  nor  symbolize  the  realities  of  life 
nor  present  them  in  the  shape  of  mental  toys."  ^ 

Besides  supplying  concentration  cores  for  his- 
tory, science,  and  literature  industrial  activities 

» Interpretation  of  the  Culture-Epoch  Theory,  Second  Year 
Book  of  the  National  Herbart  Society,  p.  95, 


/ 


294  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

are  to  be  made  the  "  allies  of  art."  The  following 
passage  from  School  and  Society  shows  how  this 
alliance  is  effected: 

The  expressive  impulse  of  the  children,  the  art  in- 
stinct, grows  out  of  the  communicating  and  construc- 
tive instincts.  It  is  their  refinement  and  full  mani- 
festation. Make  the  construction  adequate,  make  it 
full,  free,  and  flexible,  give  it  a  social  motive,  some- 
thing to  tell,  and  you  have  a  work  of  art.  Take  one 
illustration  of  this  in  connection  with  the  textile 
work — sewing  and  weaving.  The  children  made  a 
primitive  loom  in  the  shop;  here  the  constructive  in- 
stinct was  appealed  to.  Then  they  wished  to  do  some- 
thing with  this  loom,  to  make  something.  It  was  the 
type  of  the  Indian  loom,  and  they  were  shown  blankets 
woven  by  the  Indians.  Each  child  made  a  design 
kindred  in  idea  to  those  of  the  Navajo  blankets,  and 
the  one  which  seemed  best  adapted  to  the  work  in  hand 
was  selected.  The  technical  resources  were  limited, 
but  the  coloring  and  form  were  worked  out  by  the 
children.^ 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  the  plan  of  mak- 
ing industrial  activities  the  "  articulating  centers 
of  school  life  "  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
final  purpose  of  education.  We  must  now  con- 
sider it  from  the  point  of  view  of  an  effort  to  me- 
diate between  the  native  interests  of  childhood  and 
the  studies  of  the  school.  It  is  claimed  that  the 
"  fourfold  interests  of  the  child — the  interest  in 

>  School  and  Society,  p.  60. 


THE  SOCIALIZATION  OF  THE  SCHOOL     295 

conversation  or  communication,  in  inquiry  or  find- 
ing out  about  things;  in  making  things  or  con- 
//  struction  and  in  artistic  expression  "  *  are  all  met 
by  the  plan  proposed,  and  that  it  offers  the  best 
connection  between  his  immediate  experience  and 
the  experience  of  the  race.  For  his  forcible  state- 
ments of  the  truths  that  education  must  find  its 
point  of  departure  in  the  native  manifestations  of 
childhood  and  its  goal  in  the  assimilation  of  race 
experience,  Dr.  Dewey  deserves  the  thanks  of  all 
those  who  are  wrestling  either  theoretically  or 
practically  with  the  problems  of  elementary  edu- 
cation. Kindergartners  owe  him  a  special  debt  of 
gratitude  for  his  effectual  aid  in  destroying  the 
prestige  of  the  new  return  to  nature  and  imder- 
mining  faith  in  its  golden  rule  "  Give  nature  her 
fling."  The  following  extracts  from  the  Child 
and  the  Curriculum  will  perhaps  sufficiently  indi- 
cate his  point  of  view : 

Abandon  the  notion  of  subject  matter  as  some- 
thing fixed  and  ready-made  in  itself,  outside  the 
child's  experience;  cease  thinking  of  the  child's  ex- 
perience as  also  something  hard  and  fast;  see  it  as 
something  fluent,  embryonic,  vital;  and  we  realize 
that  the  child  and  the  curriculum  are  simply  two 
limits  which  define  a  single  process.  Just  as  two 
points  define  a  straight  line,  so  the  present  stand- 
point of  the  child  and  the  facts  and  truths  of  studies 


School  and  Society,  p.  61. 


296  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

define  instruction.  It  is  continuous  reconstruction, 
moving  from  the  child's  present  experience  out  into 
that  represented  by  the  organized  bodies  of  truth  that 
"we  call  studies. 

On  the  face  of  it,  the  various  studies,  arithmetic, 
geography,  language,  botany,  etc.,  are  themselves  ex- 
perience— they  are  that  of  the  race.  They  embody  the 
cumulative  outcome  of  the  efforts,  the  strivings,  and 
successes  of  the  human  race  generation  after  genera- 
tion. They  represent  this,  not  as  a  mere  accumula- 
tion, not  as  a  miscellaneous  heap  of  separate  bits  of 
experience,  but  in  some  organized  and  systematized 
way — that  is,  as  reflectively  formulated. 

Hence,  the  facts  and  truths  that  enter  into  the 
child's  present  experience,  and  those  contained  in  the 
subject  matter  of  studies,  are  the  initial  and  final 
terms  of  one  reality.  To  oppose  one  to  the  other  is  to 
oppose  the  infancy  and  maturity  of  the  same  growing 
life;  it  is  to  set  the  moving  tendency  and  the  final 
result  of  the  same  process  over  against  each  other;  it 
is  to  hold  that  the  nature  and  the  destiny  of  the  child 
war  with  each  other. 

If  such  be  the  case,  the  problem  of  the  relation  of 
the  child  and  the  curriculum  presents  itself  in  this 
guise :  Of  what  use,  educationally  speaking,  is  it  to  be 
able  to  see  the  end  in  the  beginning?  How  does  it 
assist  us  in  dealing  with  the  early  stages  of  growth 
to  be  able  to  anticipate  its  later  phases?  The  studies, 
as  we  have  agreed,  represent  the  possibilities  of  de- 
velopment inherent  in  the  child's  immediate  crude  ex- 
perience. But  after  all  they  are  not  parts  of  that 
present  and  immediate  life.  Why,  then  or  how,  make 
account  of  them? 

Asking  such  a  question  suggests  its   own   answer. 


THE  SOCIALIZATION  OF  THE  SCHOOL     297 

To  see  the  outcome  is  to  know  in  what  direction  the 
present  experience  is  moving,  provided  it.  move  nor- 
mally and  soundly.  The  far-a^ay  point,  which  is  of 
no  significance  to  us  simply  as  far  away  becomes  of 
huge  importance  the  moment  we  take  it  as  defining  a 
present  direction  of  movement.  Taken  in  this  way 
it  is  no  remote  and  distant  result  to  be  achieved  but 
a  guiding  method  in  dealing  with  the  present.  The 
systematized  and  defined  experience  of  the  adult 
mind,  in  other  words,  is  of  value  to  us  in  interpreting 
the  child's  life  as  it  immediately  shows  itself,  and  in 
passing  on  to  guidance  or  direction/ 

The  convictions  out  of  which  has  grown  the 
effort  to  socialize  the  school  may  be  summarized 
as  follows : 

I 
The   purpose  of  the  school  is  to  prepare  for 
social  life. 

n 
Such  preparation  can  only  be  made  by  engaging 
in  social  life. 

Ill 

The  school  must  therefore  be  transformed  into 
a  miniature  community. 

IV 

The  articulating  centers  of  life  in  this  miniature 
community  shall  be  industrial  occupations. 

»  The  Child  and  the  Curriculum,  pp.  1&-18. 


298  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

V 

The  organization  of  community  life  around  in- 
dustrial occupations  calls  forth  methods  whose 
"  emphasis  is  upon  construction  and  giving  out 
rather  than  upon  absorption  and  mere  learning."  ^ 
Through  this  change  of  emphasis  selfishness  is  at- 
tacked and  the  spirit  of  social  service  developed. 

VI 

In  so  far  as  the  spirit  of  social  service  is  devel- 
oped and  the  habit  of  cooperation  formed  the 
problem  of  school  discipline  is  solved. 

VII 

Industrial  occupations  may  be  so  taught  that 
they  not  only  foster  the  spirit  of  social  service  but 
become  the  organizing  centers  of  science,  history, 
literature,  and  art.  Hence,  in  addition  to  solving 
the  problem  of  school  discipline  they  unify  all 
branches  of  school  study. 

VIII 

The  point  of  departure  for  education  must  be 
sought  in  the  native  interests  of  childhood.  The 
goal  of  education  is  the  assimilation  of  race  expe- 
rience.    "  The  facts  and  truths  that  enter  into  the 

»  Ethical  Principles  Underlying  Education,  p.  15. 


THE  SOCIALIZATION  OF  THE  SCHOOL     299 

child's  present  experience  and  those  contained  in 
the  subject  matter  of  studies  "  can  be  connected 
because  "  they  are  the  initial  and  final  terms  of 
one  reality."  The  concentration  of  school  life 
around  industrial  occupations  achieves  this  con- 
nection because  while  meeting  the  child  on  his  own 
plane  and  responding  to  the  impulses  of  "  saying, 
making,  finding  out,  and  creating  "  it  moves  for- 
ward from  these  impulses  toward  appreciation  of 
the  great  values  of  life  embodied  in  the  studies  of 
the  school. 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE    LIVING    ISSUE 

Having  listened  to  Faust's  confession  of  his 
pantheistic  creed  Goethe's  Gretchen  speaks  from 
the  depths  of  her  troubled  soul: 

Das  ist  alles  recht  schon  und  gut; 
Ungefahr  sagt  das  der  Pfarrer   auch, 
Nur  mit  ein  bischen  andern  Worten. 

As  the  Froebelian  Kindergartner  ponders  the 
ideals  which  have  created  the  socialized  school  she 
finds  herself  in  a  state  of  mind  analogous  to 
Gretchen's.  For  she,  too,  believes  that  education 
should  strive  to  create  a  nobler  social  life.  She 
admits  a  correspondence  between  the  development 
of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race.  She  ac- 
cepts with  whole  heart  the  dictum  that  "  the  child 
must  be  conceived  primarily  as  "  an  agent  or 
doer."  ^  She  knows  that  instincts  and  impulses 
must  be  kept  from  "  discharging  at  random  and 
running  off  on  side  tracks."     She  wrestled  with 

•  Ethical  Ideals  Underlying  Education,  Dr.  John  Dewey, 
p.  27. 

300 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  301 

might  and  main  against  the  free-play  programme 
because  it  encouraged  such  "  random  discharges," 
and  because  of  its  emphasis  upon  activities  which 
were  "  symptoms  of  a  waning  tendency  "  ^  and 
survivals  of  an  outgrown  past.  Her  o\vn  most 
cherished  conviction  speaks  to  her  in  the  words: 
"  Guidance  is  not  external  imposition.  It  is  free- 
ing the  life  process  for  its  own  most  adequate  ful- 
fillment." ^  To  her  as  to  the  creator  of  the  social- 
ized school  the  problem  of  education  is  to  find 
"  the  most  eifective  points  of  attachment  between 
the  spontaneous  activities  of  the  child  and  the 
aims  which  we  expect  these  powers  to  realize."  ^ 
In  her  anxious  mind  the  question  forms  itself, 
With  so  many  points  of  agreement  why  do  I  so 
deeply  disagree  ?  Are  not  the  ideals  of  the  social- 
ized school,  she  further  queries,  the  very  ideals  I 
learned  from  Froebel,  or  do  the  similar  sounding 
words  express  a  different  meaning  ?  Is  this  differ- 
ent meaning  responsible  for  the  practices  I  cannot 
approve  ?  Is  the  explanation  of  this  different 
meaning  to  be  found  in  a  context  of  ideas  which 
must  modify  or  rather  completely  transform  every 
principle  which  advocates  of  school  socialization 
seem  to  hold  in  common  with  the  founder  of  the 
kindergarten  ? 


'  The  Child  and  the  Curriculum,  p.  19.  '  Ibid.,  p.  22. 

« Ethical  Principles  Underlying  Education,  p.  27. 


302  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Many  kindergartners  are  honestly  perplexed  by 
these  questions.  To  answer  them  they  must  search 
their  own  minds  and  define  their  points  of  disa^ 
greement  with  the  ideals  of  the  socialized  school. 
May  I  blaze  a  rough  path  for  such  an  exploring 
party  by  frankly  confessing  what  I  discover  as  I 
explore  myself  ? 

INDUSTRIES    AND    LITEKATUEE 

I  begin  by  considering  the  relationship  assumed 
to  exist  between  industrial  occupations  and  litera- 
ture. Dr.  Dewey  seems  to  hold  that  the  charac- 
teristic industries  of  different  periods  of  history 
stand  in  ancestral  relation  to  their  culture-prod- 
ucts.^ He  claims  that  the  chief  value  of  these 
products  lies  in  their  reflection  of  natural  facts 
and  social  conditions.  He  believes  that  children 
must  develop  apperceptive  organs  for  such  prod- 
ucts by  repeating  the  industries  from  which  they 
descend.  To  borrow  his  own  illustration  contact 
with  earth  and  seed,  air  and  sun,  knowledge  of 
how  agriculture  is  now  carried  on,  what  its  prod- 
ucts are  and  how  they  reach  the  market  are  neces- 
sary preliminaries  to  sympathetic  appreciation  of 
the  culture  products  of  an  agricultural  stage  of 
historic  development.^ 

Looking  into  my  own  mind  I  discover  that  I 

»  See  Chapter  X,  pp.  292-3.  »/6id.,  p.  287. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  303 

do  not  share  these  convictions.  I  do  not  believe 
that  industries  are  the  progenitors  of  culture  prod- 
ucts. I  am  sure  that  the  reflection  of  local  and 
temporal  conditions  is  not  the  chief  value  of  litera- 
ture. My  most  cherished  psychologic  insight  for- 
bids the  approach  to  imagination  through  the  un- 
derstanding. The  elaborate  preparation  of  an 
apperceiving  mass  for  the  seizure  and  digestion  of 
culture-products  seems  to  me  to  invert  the  true 
order  of  development  whose  point  of  departure  is 
always  the  typical  fact.* 

A  simple  illustration  may  help  to  define  my 
point  of  view.  In  the  story  of  David  there  are 
details  which  point  to  a  pastoral  stage  of  develop- 
ment. David  is  a  shepherd  lad.  He  has  devel- 
oped courage  by  struggling  with  the  wild  animals 
that  attacked  his  sheep.  In  the  lonely  watches 
of  the  night  he  has  learned  to  confide  in  a  God 
who  will  protect  him  as  he  protects  his  flock.  He 
fights  with  a  shepherd's  sling  and  with  five  smooth 
stones  carried  in  a  shepherd's  bag.  These  details 
are  picturesque  and  appealing,  and  if  I  may  trust 
my  own  memories  of  childhood  they  can  be  appre- 
ciated without  any  actual  experience  of  pastoral 
life.  The  supreme  value  of  David's  story,  how- 
ever, lies  not  in  the  coloring  of  its  details  by  a 

>  See  Chapter  II,  where  I  have  attempted  to  show  that  with 
Httle  children  typical  facts  must  be  presented  in  the  guise  of 
typical  acts. 
23 


304  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

I  pastoral  experience  but  in  the  fact  that  through  a 
Imost  appealing  concrete  example  it  suggests  every 
implication  of  the  highest  ideal  of  heroism.  It 
opposes  physical  strength  and  vainglorious  self- 
confidence  to  the  high  courage  of  a  believing  and 
ardent  soul.  Goliath  is  a  giant  completely  armed. 
David  is  an  unarmed  and  tender  youth.  The 
former  is  a  braggart  who  magnifies  his  own  prow- 
ess; the  latter  a  hero  of  faith  and  humility  fight- 
ing for  the  deliverance  of  his  people  in  the 
strength  of  his  God.  "  Come  to  me,"  shouts 
the  champion  of  the  uncircumcized  Philistines, 
"  come  to  me  and  I  will  give  thy  flesh  unto  the 
fowls  of  the  air  and  to  the  beasts  of  the  field." 
"  Thou  comest  to  me,"  responds  the  young  hero 
of  Israel  "  with  a  sword  and  with  a  spear  and 
with  a  shield,  but  I  come  to  thee  in  the  name  of 
the  Lord  of  Hosts,  the  God  of  the  armies  of  Is- 
rael whom  thou  hast  defied.  This  day  will  the 
Lord  deliver  thee  into  mine  hand." 

Every  effort  I  make  to  test  the  tie  between  in- 
dustry and  literature  confirms  my  conviction 
that  it  is  a  very  slender  one.  What  essential  rela- 
tionship exists  between  the  stories  of  Boots, 
Dummling,  or  Cinderella,  and  any  form  of  indus- 
trial activity?  What  light  is  cast  by  industrial 
avocations  upon  the  myths  of  Bellerophon  and 
Horatius,  the  stories  of  Daniel  and  Elijah,  or  the 
legends  of  the  Holy  Grail  ?    What  explanation  of 


i 


THE   LIVING   ISSUE  305 

the  Oresteia  of  ^schylus  or  the  CEdipus  of  Sopho- 
cles can  be  found  in  the  industries  of  Greece  dur- 
ing the  lives  of  these  two  great  dramatists  ?  What 
clew  to  the  tragedy  of  Hamlet  is  furnished  by  the 
economic  life  of  England  in  the  Elizabethan  age  ? 
The  reader  who  has  given  careful  attention  to 
the  fourth  chapter  of  this  book  will  not  accuse  me 
of  ignoring  the  connection  between  literature  and 
life.  But  life  and  industry  are  not  coextensive 
terms.  The  spirit  of  a  people  or  an  age  is  not 
fully  expressed  in  and  cannot  be  adequately  inter- 
preted hy  its  industries.  Every  civilization  em- 
bodies some  specific  ideal  of  family  life,  some  pe- 
culiar social  conventions,  some  determinate  mode 
of  political  organization,  and  some  characteristic 
type  of  religious  dogma  and  worship,  as  well  as 
some  particular  kind  or  kinds  of  industry.  Its 
literature  mirrors  not  one  but  all  of  the  forms  in 
which  its  spirit  has  sought  incarnation.  Hence 
the  literature  of  an  age  should  not  be  approached 
through  its  industries,  but  the  industries,  arts,  and 
institutions  of  an  age  may  all  be  approached 
through  its  literature."  * 


•  "  There  are  five  or  six  categories  of  facts  or  ideas  which 
are  the  natural  framework  and  afterwards  continue  to  be  the 
evidences  for  any  civilization  worthy  of  the  name.  They 
are  language  and  grammar,  religious  dogma  and  worship, 
literature  and  fine  art,  philosophy  and  science,  social  organi- 
zation   and    political    institutions." — Taine  summarized   by 


306  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Not  only  is  the  life  of  each  historic  people  and 
age  to  be  approached  through  its  literature,  but 
life  and  literature  alike  derive  their  supreme  value 
from  the  conceptions  which  they  embody  of  na- 
ture, of  man,  and  of  the  power  whence  both  pro- 
ceed ;  or,  from  an  awakened  sense  of  defect  in 
inherited,  conceptions  and  a  struggle  to  make 
clearer  and  more  comprehensive  definitions.  The 
culture-products  of  a  constructive  age  mirror  the 
ideals  it  is  incarnating;  the  culture-products  of  a 
transitional  age  reflect  the  problems  with  which  it 
wrestles.  All  great  historic  ideals  are  partial  ex- 
pressions of  generic  humanity;  all  great  human 
problems  express  the  recurrent  effort  of  man  to 
define  his  generic  nature  more  adequately  and  to 
comprehend  more  clearly  its  final  presuppositions. 
It  is  because  all  true  literature  reveals  mankind  to 
men  that  the  culture-products  of  each  people  and 
each  age  appeal  to  all  people  and  all  ages. 

This  insight  interprets  the  permanent  interest 
of  the  literary  products  referred  to  in  an  earlier 
paragraph  of  this  chapter.  We  do  not  outgrow 
Boots  because  the  type  of  character  he  represents 
belongs  to  elect  individuals  in  all  ages.  "  He  is 
the  man  whom  Heaven  helps  because  he  can  help 
himself,  and  so  after  his  brothers  try  and  fail,  he 

Boutmy — Le  Parthenon  et  le  Genie  Grec.  I  quote  the  passage 
as  translated  in  The  Athenian  Drama:  Sophocles,  Introduc- 
tion, pp.  xix,  XX. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  307 

alone  can  watch  in  the  barn,  and  tame  the  steed, 
and  ride  up  the  glass  hill,  and  gain  the  princess 
and  half  the  kingdom."  ^  We  can  never  forget 
Bellerophon  until  the  progeny  of  the  Chimaera  are 
extinct.  Horatius  will  live  so  long  as  brave  hearts 
respond  to  the  call  of  country.  Daniel  and  Elijah 
can  never  die  while  immortal  spirits  aspire  toward 
communion  with  eternal  reality;  and  until  we  re- 
nounce our  Christian  faith  in  the  infinite  worth 
of  each  human  soul,  we  shall  be  spurred  to  roman- 
tic adventure  by  the  example  of  the  Knights  of 
Chivalry. 

In  the  life  of  mankind  as  in  the  lives  of  indi- 
viduals there  are  dramatic  crises — periods  of  tran- 
sition when  "  the  old  order  changes  making  way 
for  the  new."  Such  a  crisis  is  portrayed  in  the 
sublime  trilogy  of  ^schylus  whose  argument  is 
the  deliverance  of  man  from  the  duty  of  blood- 
revenge  by  the  establishment  of  a  great  court  of 
justice.  The  Oresteia  is  "  the  glorification  of 
Athens — that  is,  of  a  truly  human  civilization," 
and  to  each  appreciative  reader  "  the  adventures 
of  individual  passion  will  seem  as  naught  beside 
this  colossal  type  of  tragedy  whose  theme  is  the 
destiny  of  nations."  ^ 

If  literature  is  to  reveal  mankind  to  men  it 

»  Dasent's  Norse  Tales,  Introduction,  p.  cxliv. 
'  Journal  of  Henri  Amiel,  translated  by  Mrs.  Hiunphrey 
Ward. 


308  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

must  not  only  celebrate  human  triumphs  but  un- 
veil the  sources  of  human  disaster.  All  men  are 
"  guilty  innocents,"  perpetually  betrayed  by  pas- 
sion and  pride  into  sins  they  would  never  have 
committed  with  intent.  Of  this  guilty-innocent 
humanity  the  CEdipus  of  Sophocles  is  the  consum- 
mate portrait.  Oedipus  solves  the  riddle  of  the 
Sphinx,  yet,  notwithstanding  oracular  warning  of 
his  impending  fate  slays  his  father  and  marries 
his  mother.  The  poet  psychologizes  the  old  myth 
by  showing  that  "  the  soul  contains  the  event  that 
shall  befall  it."  He  heaps  one  dramatic  improb- 
ability upon  another  in  order  to  make  manifest 
the  profundity  of  his  hero's  blindness.  Hence  the 
tragedy  of  the  son  of  Laius  is  a  revelation  which 
forever  "  confounds  the  conceit  of  human  self- 
sufficiency  in  horror."  ^ 

In  contrast  with  the  CEdipus,  which  discloses 
the  fatal  outcome  of  overweening  self-confidence, 
Hamlet  is  a  tragedy  of  the  world-order  which  is 
perpetually  challenging  mankind  to  bring  forth 
greater  men  by  imposing  upon  existent  humanity 
tasks  it  is  not  able  to  perform.  "  It  is  clear,"  saya 
Goethe,  "  that  in  the  character  of  Hamlet,  Shake- 
speare meant  to  represent  the  effects  of  a  great  ac- 
tion laid  upon  a  soul  unfit  for  the  performance 
of  it.  .  .  .  There  is  an  oak  tree  planted  in  a  costly 

»  The  Athenian  Drama:  Sophocles,  Introduction,  p.  1. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  309 

jar  which  should  have  borne  only  pleasant  flow- 
ers in  its  bosom :  the  roots  expand,  the  jar  is  shiv- 
ered. A  lovely,  pure,  noble,  and  most  moral  nature, 
without  the  strength  which  creates  a  hero,  sinks 
beneath  a  burden  which  it  cannot  carry  and  must 
not  cast  away."  ^ 

The  two  insights  I  have  striven  to  suggest  are 
that  the  literature  of  each  nation  and  each  age  re- 
flects all  aspects  of  its  life,  and  that  the  varied  life 
thus  reflected  is  itself  either  an  approximate  em- 
bodiment of  universal  and  abiding  ideals,  or  ex- 
presses a  struggle  of  the  generic  spirit  to  define 
these  ideals  more  adequately.  Manifestly  neither 
the  embodied  ideals  of  a  constructive  age  nor  the 
haunting  enigmas  of  an  age  of  transition  can  be 
explained  by  their  contemporaneous  industries  al- 
though it  may  be  freely  granted  that  industrial 
conditions  conspire  with  other  causes  to  create  the 
Zeit  Geist.  In  our  own  days,  for  example,  the 
nearer  intercourse  between  the  East  and  West 
brought  about  by  commercial  enterprise  is  incit- 
ing a  comparison  between  oriental  and  occidental 
ideals  of  religion,  of  domestic  life,  and  of  political 
organization,  upon  whose  outcome  depends  the 
future  of  history.  Commerce  has  furnished  the 
occasion  for  this  pregnant  comparison,  but  it  nei- 
ther offers  solutions  of  the  questions  at  issue  nor 


Wilhelm  Meister,  Carlyle's  translation. 


310  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

capacitates    intellect    for    their    adequate    appre- 
hension. 


The  question  as  to  what  constitutes  the  chief 
value  of  culture-products  is  one  of  such  moment 
in  education  that  I  am  unwilling  to  leave  it  with- 
out some  discussion  of  Dr.  Dewey's  view  of  the 
myth.  In  a  statement  already  quoted  ^  he  affirms 
that  "  the  myth  has  permanent  value  as  a  story  in 
just  the  degree  in  which  the  child  has  been  led 
for  himself  first  to  appreciate  the  natural  facts 
and  social  conditions  reflected  in  it."  In  another 
sentence  of  the  article  from  which  this  statement 
is  quoted,  he  says  that  "  it  is  self-deception  to  sup- 
pose that  by  some  inner  affinity  between  the  myth 
and  the  child's  nature  he  is  being  morally  intro- 
duced into  the  civilization  from  which  the  myth 
sprung,  and  is  receiving  a  sort  of  spiritual  bap- 
tism through  literature."  Finally,  referring  par- 
ticularly to  the  sun-myth,  he  tells  us  that  if  the 
child  "  has  been  led  in  his  nature-study  to  realize 
the  part  played  by  the  sun  in  the  economy  of  life, 
if  he  has  been  led  to  appreciate  the  historic  con- 
dition of  people  with  a  precarious  relationship  to 
fire,  myths  of  the  sun  and  fire  may  play  a  serious 
and  worthy  part."  ^ 

>  See  Chapter  X,  p.  293. 

'  Interpretation  of  the  Culture-Epoch  Theory,  Second  Year 
Book  of  the  National  Herbart  Society.     (Italics  mine.) 


THE   LIVING    ISSUE  31 

I  am  not  sure  I  understand  these  statements^ 
for  I  find  it  impossible  to  believe  what  they  seem 
to  imply.  I  cannot  suppose  that  Dr.  Dewey 
really  means  that  children  should  translate  such 
myths  as  those  of  Herakles,  Arthur,  or  St 
George,  into  poetic  portrayals  of  the  conflicts  of 
the  sun;  should  recognize  his  rays  in  their  invin- 
cible weapons,  or  his  noonday  splendor  in  their 
flaming  eyes  and  streaming  locks.  But  if  this  be 
not  what  he  means  and  if  we  may  tell  our  cher- 
ished myths  in  simple  fashion  and  without  expla- 
nation of  their  solar  lineage,  how  shall  we  inter- 
pret the  statement  that  "  myths  of  the  sun  play  a 
serious  and  worthy  part  in  education  in  so  far 
as  the  child  has  been  led  through  nature-study  to 
realize  the  part  played  by  the  sun  in  the  economy 
of  life  ? " 

Waiving  these  intrusive  doubts  and  confining 
ourselves  to  statements  whose  purport  is  unam- 
biguous, it  is  evident  that  to  Dr.  Dewey  the  spir- 
itual baptism  of  literature  means  introduction  to 
some  local  and  temporal  form  of  social  life  and 
some  particular  natural  environment.  The  word 
baptism  suggests  the  thought  which  lies  at  the 
heart  of  my  opposing  contention.  Baptism  is  the 
outer  and  visible  sign  of  a  regenerating  agency. 
The  natural  man  must  be  made  over  into  a  spir- 
itual man,  and  baptism  is  the  rite  under  which  the 
church  symbolizes  this  transforming  process.    The 


312  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

baptism  of  literature  means  that  it  is  one  of  the 
conspiring  agencies  through  which  the  process  of 
regeneration  is  effected.^ 

;  The  prototype  of  all  the  heroes  of  myth  is  the 
I  hero  in  man.  It  was  heroic  man  who  made  the 
sun  battle  with  night,  storm,  and  eclipse,  and  who 
in  the  victories  of  the  Lord  of  Day  beheld  adum- 
brations of  his  own  conquering  career.  Having 
thus  idealized  natural  phenomena  by  imputing  to 
I  them  human  meaning,  men  promptly  forgot  the 
phenomena  idealized  and  the  solar  substrate  of 
primitive  myths  remained  hidden  until  it  was  re- 
discovered by  the  modern  science  of  comparative 
philology.  The  interest  of  children  in  Heracles, 
Siegfried,  and  St.  George  is  as  unaffected  by  their 
solar  descent  as  it  is  independent  of  the  local 
and  temporal  setting  of  their  heroic  deeds.  The 
value  of  myth  is  that  through  it  deep  calls  unto 
deep  and  man  challenges  men.  Humanity  is  a 
hero  born  to  a  conquering  destiny.  It  is  because 
myth  portrays  this  hero  and  foreshadows  his  vic- 
torious career  that  it  becomes  for  each  participant 
member  of  humanity  a  baptism  of  the  spirit  and 
of  fire. 

In  its  insistence  that  the  child  should  be  fed 
with  nursery  rhymes,  fairy  lore  and  myth  Her- 
bartianism  did  its  most  righteous  deed.      In  its 

>  See  Chapter  V,  Literature  and  Life.  See  also  in  Sym- 
bolic Education,  Chapters  III  and  IV. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  Sl3 

insistence  that  these  culture  products  should  be 
made  cores  of  interest  it  committed  its  great  edu- 
cational offense.  With  the  substitution  of  indus- 
trial avocations  for  classic  stories  as  the  articu- 
lating centers  of  school  life,  the  vices  of  concentric 
instruction  are  increased  and  its  one  redeeming 
virtue  lost. 

INDUSTRIES   AND   AET 

Literature  is  not  the  child  of  industry.  iNei- 
ther,  I  hasten  to  add  is  art.  No  "  proud  util- 
ity "  gave  birth  to  architecture,  sculpture,  paint- 
ing, music,  or  poetry.  Long  since  wise  Herr 
Teufelsdrockh  made  the  startling  suggestion  that 
"  the  first  purpose  of  clothes  was  not  warmth  or 
decency  but  ornament,*'  and  that  "  the  first  spiri- 
tual want  of  barbarous  man  is  decoration."  It  is 
interesting  to  find  this  suggestion  repeated  and 
amplified  by  that  serious  economic  historian  Carl 
Bucher  in  his  book  on  Industrial  Evolution. 

"  Industrial  activity,"  he  writes,  "  seems  every- 
where to  start  with  the  painting  of  the  body,  tat- 
tooing, piercing  or  otherwise  disfiguring  separate 
parts  of  the  body,  and  gradually  to  advance  to  the 
production  of  ornaments,  masks,  petrograms,  and 
similar  play-products.  In  these  things  there  is 
everywhere  displayed  a  peculiar  tendency  to  imi- 
tate the  animals  which  the  savage  meets  with  in 
his  immediate  surroundings,  and  which  be  looks 


314  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

upon  as  his  equals.  The  partly  prehistoric  rock 
drawings  and  carvings  of  the  Bushmen,  the  In- 
dians and  the  Australians  represent  chiefly  ani- 
mals and  men ;  pottery,  wood-carving,  and  even 
wickerwork  begin  with  the  production  of  animal 
forms.  Even  when  the  advance  is  made  to  the 
construction  of  objects  of  daily  use  (pots,  stools, 
etc.),  the  animal  figure  is  retained  with  remark- 
able regularity ;  and  lastly,  in  the  dances  of  primi- 
tive peoples,  the  imitation  of  the  motions  and  the 
cries  of  animals  plays  the  principal  part.  All 
regularly  sustained  activity  finally  takes  on  a 
rhythmic  form  and  becomes  fused  with  music  and 
song  in  an  indivisible  whole. 

"  It  is  accordingly  in  play  that  technical  skill  is 
developed  and  it  tends  to  the  useful  only  very 
gradually.  The  order  of  progression  hitherto  ac- 
cepted must  therefore  be  just  reversed:  play  is 
older  than  work;  art  older  than  production  iot 
use."  1 

Assuming  that  Professor  Bucher  has  thor- 
oughly verified  the  facts  he  presents  in  support  of 
his  statement  of  the  historic  priority  of  both  play 
^nd  art  over  production  for  use,  we  must  deny  to 
[the  educators  who  make  industries  the  point  of 
departure  for  art  the  right  to  buttress  their  pro- 
cedure by  appeal  to  the  parallel  between  the  devel- 

»  Industrial  Evolution,   Carl   Bucher.     Translation  by  S. 
Morley  Makett,  Ph.D.,  pp.  27,  28. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  315 

opment  of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  historic  recapitulation 
the  invented  loom  and  the  Indian  blanket  are  not 
only  unnecessary  but  misleading  forerunners  of 
decorative  design.  Is  it  not  a  psychologic  error  to 
suppose  that  the  art  instinct  grows  out  of  the  con- 
structive instinct?  Is  it  not  a  pedagogic  blunder 
to  claim  that  children  need  a  motive  for  making 
designs  other  than  pleasure  in  designing  ?  ^ 

The  attempt  to  derive  art  from  industry  not 
only  violates  the  order  of  history  but  implies  a 
conception  of  art  which  ignores  its  defining  mark. 
Such  a  defective  conception  of  art  is  implied  in 
the  following  sentence :  "  Make  the  construction 
adequate;  make  it  full,  free,  and  flexible;  give  it 
a  social  motive,  something  to  tell,  and  you  have  a 
work  of  art."  This  statement  identifies  art  with 
picture-writing  and  fails  to  recognize  that  "  the 
distinctive  principle  of  art  is  order,  including 
under  this  general  term  rhythm,  measure,  propor- 
tion, and  all  those  modes  of  arrangement  used  by 
artists  which  may  be  summarized  as  composi- 
tion." ^     A  concrete  genetic  development  of  the 

'  The  children  made  a  primitive  loom  in  the  shop;  here  the 
constructive  instinct  was  appealed  to.  Then  they  wished  to 
do  something  with  this  loom,  to  make  something.  .  .  . 
They  were  shown  blankets  woven  by  the  Indians.  Each 
child  made  a  design,  kindred  in  idea  to  those  of  the  Navajo 
blankets.     See  in  Chapter  X,  the  context  of  this  passage. 

'  See  the  discussion  on  art  in  Chapter  II  of  this  book. 


316  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

principles  of  composition  must  be  included  in  any 
valid  method  of  teaching  art. 

The  historic  point  of  departure  for  the  evolu- 
tion of  art  is  the  tattoo,  which  is  a  regular  pattern 
pricked  over  the  human  body  in  order  to  make  it 
more  conformable  to  savage  taste.  It  betrays  a 
love  for  monotonous  repetition  which  the  savage 
himself  does  not  understand  but  which  is  explica- 
ble through  "  the  identity  in  form  between  the 
rhythm  of  his  soul-activity  and  the  sense-percep- 
tion by  which  he  perceives  regularity."  ^  A  simi- 
lar delight  in  repetition  is  shown  by  every  art  in 
the  earliest  stage  of  its  development.  The  first 
musical  instruments  are  gongs,  triangles,  cymbals, 
jawbones,  and  rattles,  whose  sole  purpose  is  to  ac- 
centuate rhythmic  intervals  of  time.  The  first 
poetry  consists  of  metrical  chants  and  refrains. 
Man  creates  art  because  he  desires  to  reveal  and 
know  himself  and  he  enjoys  the  regular  recurrence 
of  graphic  elements,  musical  notes,  and  verbal 
phrases,  because  it  corresponds  with  the  primary 
fact  of  conscious  intelligence  which  is  that  it  in- 
volves a  constant  return  of  the  self  to  the  self. 
Art  is  therefore  an  aboriginal  expression  of  the 
free  human  spirit ;  it  is  play  or  spontaneous  activ- 
ity which  imposes  upon  itself  the  structural  form 
of   human   consciousness.      Self-consciousness    in- 

'  Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  Wm.  T.  Harris, 
p.  354. 


THE  LIVING   ISSUE  317 

volves  first  the  ever-recurrent  return  of  the  self 
to  the  self;  second,  the  antithesis  of  the  self  and 
its  object ;  third,  the  penetration  by  the  self  of  its 
own  manifold  distinctions.  To  these  several  im- 
plications of  self-consciousness  correspond  the 
three  great  principles  of  art,  regularity  or  rhyth- 
mic repetition,  symmetry  or  balance,  and  har- 
mony. 

Like  the  savage  the  young  child  enjoys  per- 
cussion instruments  and  rhythmic  phrases  and 
delights  in  making  rhythmic  arrangements  of  but- 
tons, shells,  pebbles,  or  other  objects.  Both  his- 
tory and  child  study  therefore  suggest  rhythmic 
arrangement  as  the  psychologic  point  of  departure 
for  the  development  of  art.    We  read  that 

There  are  nine  and  sixty  ways 

Of  composing"  tribal  lays, 

And  every  single  one  of  them  is  right. 

There  are  likewise  countless  ways  of  spacing  and 
grouping  concrete  objects,  graphic  elements,  and 
_ freely  drawn  figures.  The  primary  aim  of  the 
art  teacher  should  be  to  incite  her  pupils  to  origi- 
nal discovery  of  varied  rhythmic  arrangements. 
Later  the  principles  of  balance  and  harmony  may 
also  be  learned  through  their  creative  application. 
In  short,  through  a  method  of  guided  self-expres- 
sion mind  and  hand  may  be  trained  to  artistic 


318  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

creation,  and  appreciation  of  the  beautiful  may  be 
developed.^ 

"  On  every  grade  of  his  being,"  says  Mr.  G. 
Baldwin  Brown,  "  man  possesses  an  ideal  self- 
determined  life  existing  side  by  side  with  but 
apart  from  his  life  as  conditioned  by  material 
needs.  This  life  expresses  itself  in,  and  is  nour- 
ished by,  various  forms  of  free  and  spontaneous 
expression  and  action,  which  on  the  lower  grades 
of  his  being  may  be  termed  simply  play,  but  on 
the  higher  grades  takes  the  shape  of  that  rational 
and  significant  play  resulting  in  art."  We  liber- 
ate the  artist  in  the  soul  when  we  induce  the  child 
to  impose  upon  creative  activity  its  own  ideal 
forms. 

INDUSTRIES    AND    HISTOEY 

As  the  crowning  values  of  literature  and  art 
are  destroyed  through  relating  them  to  industrial 
avocations,  so  the  eminent  meaning  of  history  is 
lost  sight  of  when  spinning,  weaving,  and  sewing 
are  made  its  "  articulating  centers."  To  my  mind 
the  most  puzzling  sentence  in  School  and  Society 
is  the  sentence  which  affirms  "  that  the  history  of 
all  mankind  can  be  concentrated  into  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  flax,  cotton,  and  wool  fibers  into  cloth- 
ing."     The  view  of  history  which  this  sentence 

»  See  Composition,  Arthur  W.  Dow.  The  Baker  and  Taylor 
Company,  New  York. 


THE  LIVING   ISSUE  319 

implies  is  amplified  in  the  statement  that  "  it  is 
through  occupations  determined  by  natural  en- 
vironment that  mankind  has  made  its  political  and 
historical  progress."  ^  The  pedagogic  conclusion 
drawn  is  that  "  industrial  occupations  shall  be 
made  points  of  departiire  whence  children  shall  be 
led  out  into  a  realization  of  the  historic  develop- 
ment of  man." 

Any  conception  which  commends  itself  to  hon- 
est and  earnest  thinkers  must  contain  some  vital 
truth.  If  I  am  not  greatly  mistaken  the  view  of 
history  presented  owes  its  power  to  the  fact  that 
it  ascends  from  the  idea  of  extraneous  relations 
between  man  and  the  world  to  the  idea  of  a  self- 
related  totality  of  historic  experience.  This  con- 
ception gets  rid  of  two  fallacies  of  thought.  It 
throws  away  the  idea  of  a  fixed  environment  to 
which  man  must  adjust  himself,  and  the  idea  of 
a  predetermined  self,  i.  e.,  a  self  in  which  facul- 
ties exist  prior  to  their  exercise.  History  is  a 
process  of  becoming  wherein  both  man  and  his 
world  are  constantly  changing.  Combining  with 
his  fellows,  man  makes  over  his  world,  and  nature 
is  the  instrument  of  his  "  ever-increasing  pur- 
pose." Through  interaction  between  the  individ- 
ual, the  social  whole,  and  the  physical  environ- 

"  In  order  to  avoid  rej>eating  a  quotation  given  in  full  in 
Chapter  X,  I  have  ventured  to  substitute  the  word  natural 
for  the  word  this.     See  Chapter  X,  pp.  289,  290. 
23 


320  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

ment,  all  three  are  constantly  modified.  I^either 
men,  societies,  nor  nature  are  fixtures.  All  are 
fluid,  transitive,  evolutionary.^ 

The  new  return  to  nature  was  dominated  by  the 
idea  of  biologic  recapitulation,  and  its  master- 
word  was  Instinct.  The  socialized  school  is  domi- 
nated by  the  idea  of  historic  recapitulation,  and 
its  master-word  is  Purpose.  It  has  been  discov- 
ered that  man  has  or  rather  is  will.  The  entity 
known  as  consciousness  may  be  fictitious,  but  the 
entity  known  as  will  is  real  and  in  essence  is  an 
activity  directed  toward  the  accomplishment  of 
ends.  For  the  sake  of  interrelated  ends  men  act 
together  and  use  nature  as  their  tool.  Through 
the  accomplishment  of  these  ends  individuals,  so- 
cieties, and  the  earth  are  progressively  trans- 
formed. 

There  is  great  inspiration  in  the  belief  that 
nature  and  humanity  are  not  made  but  in  process 
of  making,  and  the  interpretation  of  history  as 
man's  continuous  creation  of  himself  and  his 
world  challenges  our  gratitude  for  its  service  in 
delivering  us  from  that  relic  of  faculty  psychol- 
ogy, the  predetermined  self,  and  that  relic  of  me- 
chanical evolution  the  fixed  environment.  It  is, 
however,  a  non  sequitur  conclusion  from  this  con- 

"  For  a  more  adequate  presentation  of  this  view  of  history, 
see  The  IMucational  Theories  of  Herbart  and  Froebel,  Dr. 
John  Angus  MacVannel,  pp.  102-106. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  321 

ception  of  history  that  "  it  is  through  occupations 
determined  by  geographical  environment  that 
mankind  has  made  its  historical  and  political 
progress."  Before  this  conclusion  I  halt,  for  I  am 
sure  that  mankind  has  made  its  most  notable  ad- 
vances not  through  purpose  and  prose  but  through 
free  self-expression,  in  play,  in  love,  in  art,  in 
literature,  and  in  religion. 

In  the  essays  of  that  most  poetic  evolutionist, 
W.  K.  Clifford,  I  find  a  passage  giving  his  view 
of  the  way  in  which  "freedom  or  action  from 
within  has  effected  the  evolution  of  physical  or- 
ganisms. The  improvement  of  a  breed,"  he  as- 
serts, "  depends  upon  the  selection  of  sports,  that 
is  to  say,  upon  modifications  due  to  the  overflow- 
ing energy  of  the  organism  which  happen  to  be 
useful  to  it  in  its  special  circumstances.  Modifi- 
cations may  take  place  by  direct  pressure  of 
external  circumstances;  the  whole  organism  or 
any  organ  may  lose  in  size  and  strength  from 
failure  of  the  proper  food,  but  such  modifications 
are  in  the  downward  not  in  the  upward  direction. 
Indirectly  external  circumstances  may,  of  course, 
produce  upward  changes.  .  .  .  But  the  immediate 
cause  of  change  in  the  direction  of  higher  organi- 
zation is  always  the  internal  and  quasi-spontane- 
ous action  of  the  organism."  ^ 

«  Lectures  and  Essays,  W.  K.  Clifford,  vol.  ii,  p.  293.    (Italics 
mine.)  I  should  prefer  to  say  that  ascending  changes  are  due 


322  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

As  sport  or  quasi-spontaneous  activity  is  the 
immediate  cause  of  ascending  changes  in  the  phys- 
ical world,  so,  free  activity  is  the  final  source  of 
human  progress,  and  as  we  have  seen  the  order  of 
historic  evolution  is  from  play,  through  art  to 
production  for  use.  Activity  for  a  purpose  is  his- 
torically later  than  activity  which  is  its  own  end 
and  reward.  Moreover,  it  is  always  through  ac- 
tivities which  are  ends  in  themselves  that  human- 
ity ascends  to  higher  levels.  The  fine  emotions, 
begotten  of  subtle  personal  relations,  quicken  the 
spirit  of  romance  and  spur  to  chivalrous  adven- 
ture. "  Beauty  "  which  "  is  its  own  excuse  for 
being "  is  forever  beckoning  responsive  souls  to 
new  heights  of  life  by  its  more  perfect  self-revela- 
tions. Religion,  which  is  a  spontaneous  leap  of 
free  spirit  toward  the  eternal  freedom,  augments 
the  energy  of  intellect  and  Avill  by  its  solution  of 
the  enigmas  of  origin  and  destiny.  Out  of  the  ro- 
mance of  love,  the  delight  in  beauty,  the  fervor  of 
moral  enthusiasm,  and  the  zest  of  intellect  must 
be  created  nobler  industries  and  a  higher  organi- 
zation of  social  and  political  life.  Faust  may  end 
his  career  by  draining  a  marsh  but  he  would  never 

to  the  action  of  life  conceived  as  an  energy  transcendant  of 
organism.  I  quote  the  passage  not  because  it  tallies  exactly 
with  my  own  p>oint  of  view  but  because  I  hope  it  may  approxi- 
mately suggest  my  point  of  view  to  persons  holding  the  teu.eta 
of  deterministic  evolution. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  323 

have  dreamed  of  the  free  man,  among  a  free 
people,  on  a  free  soil,  had  he  not  loved  Gretchen, 
wandered  through  classical  Walpurgis  Night,  been 
wedded  to  Greek  Helen,  and  learned  from  Chris- 
tianity of  that  divine  grace  which  his  poet  creator 
symbolizes  in  the  vision  of  the  Ewig-Weibliche. 

In  so  far  as  we  comprehend  that  through  the 
varied  forms  of  free  self-expression  man  mounts 
from  height  to  height  of  historic  achievement  we 
shall  know  that  not  industry  but  religion  is  the 
foundation  of  social  life  and  the  creator  of  civili- 
zation. For  how  can  love  be  joyful,  fervent,  and 
faithful  if  haunted  forever  by  prevision  of  its  own 
sure  and  swift  extinction  ?  How  can  great  litera- 
ture and  art  arise  unless  man  learns  to  translate 
aright  "  the  inner  meaning  of  nature  and  human 
life  ?  "  And  how  shall  he  discover  this  meaning 
save  as  he  agonizes  to  answer  the  questions  whence 
am  I,  whither  go  I,  and  for  what  reason  am  I 
here  ?  The  belief  that  civilization  has  arisen  out  of 
man's  struggle  to  get  food,  shelter,  and  clothing  is 
an  illusion.  It  has  been  created  by  his  passionate 
quest  for  God,  freedom,  and  immortality,  and  its 
different  types  are  only  to  be  explained  by  differ- 
ent answers  to  the  haunting  questions  of  human 
origin,  human  nature,  and  human  destiny. 

I  contrast  the  dominant  religion  of  Asia  whose 
supreme  power  can  tolerate  no  freedom  save  its 
ovm.  with  the  Christian  revelation  of  a  loving  God, 


324  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

whose  eternal  life  is  persistent  communication  of 
His  own  free  being  to  His  creatures.  I  contrast 
Nirvana  where  individuality  is  forever  lost,  with 
the  city  of  God,  where  individuality  is  forever 
established  through  social  communion.  I  contrast 
tlie  governments  of  Asia  where  the  ruler  is  every- 
thing and  the  people  nothing,  with  the  nations 
of  Europe  and  America  where  the  state  is  great 
in  proportion  to  the  greatness  of  its  citizens. 
And,  as  my  mind  lingers  over  these  contrasts,  I 
become  aware  that  their  final  explanation  is  to  be 
found  in  the  fact  that  the  orient  has  interpreted 
nature  and  human  life  through  the  principle  of 
proud  and  selfish  exclusion,  while  the  Christian 
Occident  has  interpreted  both  through  that  partici- 
pant humility  whose  root  is  love.  Brahma  shares 
nothing  with  the  ephemeral  manifestations  of  his 
abiding  life.  The  Christian  God  yearns  to  share 
all  He  is  with  His  creation,  believes  that  men 
are  worthy  to  participate  in  His  being,  and  by  the 
power  of  divine  humility  spans  the  chasm  be- 
tween utter  nothingness  and  eternal  perfection. 

It  is  because  Asia  models  her  life  upon  the  life 
of  an  excluding  first  principle  "  that  she  has  des- 
potic governments  and  caste  systems."  For  the 
same  reason  every  typical  Asiatic  is  both  a  slave 
and  a  tyrant.  The  nobleman  is  a  slave  to  his  em- 
peror and  a  tyrant  to  his  retainers.  Each  retainer 
is  a  slave  to  his  lord  and  a  tyrant  to  those  less  in 


THE   LIVING   ISSUE  325 

rank  than  himself.  The  lowest  man  is  a  tyrant 
to  his  wife  and  children.  Nothing  is  common,  not 
even  morality.  The  meaning  of  nature  and  hu- 
man life,  as  read  by  Asia,  is  that  both  are  arbi- 
trary and  vanishing  manifestations  of  a  Power 
which  is  "  infinite,  single,  eternal,  alone."  In  this 
answer  to  the  question  of  origin  lies  the  clew  to 
her  history  and  the  explanation  of  her  institu- 
tions. 

"  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit  for  theirs  is  the 
kingdom  of  heaven."  The  humble  God  who 
shares  His  being  with  His  children  expects  of 
them  conformity  to  His  character.  They  must 
believe  in  each  other  as  He  believes  in  them. 
They  must  share  with  each  other  as  He  shares 
with  them.  Hence  they  must  accept  the  truth  that 
in  some  very  deep  sense  all  men  are  free  and 
equal ;  must  recognize  that  in  virtue  of  such  free- 
dom and  equality  every  individual  is  sacred ;  must 
confess  that  the  effort  of  all  is  needed  to  safeguard 
the  liberty  of  each,  and  as  the  practical  corollary 
of  their  generous  creed  must  "  mutually  pledge  to 
each  other  their  lives,  their  fortunes,  and  their  sa- 
cred honor  that  they  will  strive  to  secure  equal 
and  exact  justice." 

In  the  convictions  which  I  have  briefly  summar- 
ized is  contained  the  key  to  occidental  civilization. 
Their  inspirer  is  the  Christian  religion.  They 
tally  with  the  conception  of  history  as  a  process 


326  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

wherein  man  is  making  himself  and  his  world. 
The  freedom  that  they  claim  for  each  individual 
means  that  every  man  is  a  self-making  energy. 
The  equality  they  assume  means  participation  in 
this  energy.  The  consummation  toward  which 
they  aspire  is  a  self-related  totality  or  social 
whole,  each  of  whose  members  reflects  its  whole- 
ness and  which  will  tolerate  in  its  physical  en- 
vironment nothing  upon  which  it  has  not  set  its 
own  stamp. 

In  so  far  as  man  suspects  himself  to  be  a  free 
being  he  liberates  energy  and  develops  wants. 
"  Will  the  whole  finance  ministers  and  iiphol- 
sterers  and  confectioners  of  modern  Europe,"  ex- 
claims Carlyle,  "undertake  in  joint-stock  company 
to  make  one  shoeblack  happy  ?  They  cannot  ac- 
complish it  above  an  hour  or  two;  for  the  shoe- 
black also  has  a  soul  quite  other  than  his  stomach, 
and  would  require  for  his  permanent  satisfaction 
and  saturation  simply  this  allotment  and  no  more, 
and  no  less:  God's  infinite  universe  altogether  to 
himself,  therein  to  enjoy  infinitely  and  fill  every 
wish  as  fast  as  it  rose."  ^  This  "  infinite  shoe- 
black "  must  learn  that  his  cravings  can  be  satis- 
fied only  by  the  spiritual  goods  which  are  in- 
finitely shareable.  Meantime,  as  a  by-product  of 
Christianity,  we  have  the  marvels  of  modern  in- 

'  Sartor  Resartus. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  327 

dustry.  When  man  discovered  his  own  infinite 
nature  his  wants  increased  and  productive  energy 
rose  in  its  might  to  meet  them.  That  most  care- 
ful student  of  Asiatic  civilization  Mr.  Meredith 
Townsend  reminds  us  that  "  Asiatics  have  halted 
everywhere  in  their  march  toward  mastery  of 
nature."  ..."  They  have  treated  earth  as  if 
they  feared  it.  Dung  is  burned  for  fuel  above  un- 
used coal-bearing  strata/'  .  .  .  and  "  though  Asi- 
atics work  in  all  metals  yet  from  end  to  end  of 
Asia  great  stores  of  iron,  of  platinum  and  tin,  of 
copper,  silver,  and  gold  lie  untouched."  ^  Asiat- 
ics will  never  master  nature  until  they  learn  that 
they  are  masters  of  nature,  and  they  cannot  know 
themselves  as  masters  of  nature  until  they  discover 
themselves  as  children  of  God. 

Dear  lover  of  playing  childhood  for  whom  I 
write — glad  confessor  of  the  faith  that  "  Man 
made  in  the  image  of  his  Creator  must  from  the 
beginning  be  conceived  and  treated  as  a  creative 
being " — look  into  your  own  consciousness  and 
see  if  it  does  not  corroborate  mine.  Recall  once 
more  the  fact  that  in  the  order  of  historic  evolu- 
tion "  play  preceded  art  and  art  preceded  pro- 
duction for  use."  Remember  that  in  ages  beyond 
the  reach  of  our  chronology  men  dreamed  of  a 
man  who  had  triumphed  over  space  and  time  and 

'  Asia  and  Europe,  Meredith  Townsend,  p.  9. 


328  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

who  was  equipped  for  free  activity  as  even  yet  in- 
dustry has  not  learned  to  equip  her  sons.  Listen 
to  the  roar  of  the  great  battles  of  history  from 
Marathon  to  Gettysburg  and  hear  beneath  their 
din  the  music  of  liberty.  Let  the  great  historic 
individuals  whose  names  humanity  cherishes  with 
fondest  reverence,  march  before  you  in  stately 
procession  and  as  you  recognize  Confucius,  Gau- 
tama, Zarathustra,  Moses,  Isaiah,  Christ  ask  your- 
self if  they  do  not  live  forever  in  men's  minds 
because  of  their  ascending  revelations  of  the  truth 
which  makes  man  free.  Summon  before  imagina- 
tion the  great  monuments  of  history  and  try  to 
enter  into  the  spirit  which  created  them.  Pros- 
trate yourself  in  the  Jewish  Temple  and  confess 
your  most  enslaving  sin !  Lift  adoring  eyes 
toward  the  eternal  loveliness  enshrined  in  the 
Parthenon.  Stand  in  the  Roman  Forum  with 
head  uncovered  before  the  majesty  of  law.  Enter 
the  Pantheon,  and  lifting  your  eyes  toward  its 
wonderful  dome  reflect  that  as  each  stone  is  sup- 
ported and  protected  by  all  the  rest,  so  the  free- 
dom of  each  individual  must  be  established  in 
and  through  his  relationship  to  the  social  whole. 
Last  of  all  kneel  in  a  great  Gothic  cathedral  and 
feel  divine  love  reaching  downward  to  your  noth- 
ingness and  striving  to  lift  you  into  the  blessed- 
ness of  its  communion.  Then  shall  you,  too,  con- 
fess with  fervor  that  "  history  is  the  progress  of 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  329 

man  into  the  consciousness  of  freedom,"  and  that 
the  stages  of  historic  progress  are  defined  by  the 
knowledge  that  "  One  is  free ;  that  some  are  free ; 
that  all  are  free." 


INDUSTEIES  AND  SCIENCE 

We  have  considered  the  results  which  flow  from 
the  attempt  to  make  industries  "  articulating  cen- 
ters for  literature,  art,  and  history.  There  re- 
mains the  consideration  of  their  relation  to 
science.  In  this  case  the  connection  is  a  more 
valid  one.  The  principles  of  physics  may  be  illus- 
trated through  the  machinery  of  production; 
chemistry  may  be  approached  through  cooking  ex- 
ercises; botany  through  agriculture  and  horticul- 
ture ;  and  natural  history  through  care  of  domes- 
tic animals.  On  the  other  hand  the  method  of 
scientific  study  illustrated  in  School  and  Society 
is  open  to  two  serious  criticisms.  The  first  is  that 
children  between  the  ages  of  eight  and  twelve  are 
not  capable  of  making  the  wide  syntheses  which  it 
demands.  They  cannot  intelligently  trace  the 
"  eflFects  of  a  mechanical  invention  upon  modes  of 
social  life,"  neither  are  their  minds  capable  of  a 
process  of  unification  including  "  the  study  of 
fibers,  of  geographical  features,  the  conditions 
under  which  raw  materials  are  grown,  the  great 
centers  of  manufacture  and  distribution,  the  phys- 


330  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

ies  involved  in  the  machinery  of  production."  * 
Such  large  unities  belong  to  the  period  of  matur- 
ity not  to  the  period  of  childhood.  The  second 
criticism  is  that  following  this  method  we  lose  all 
possibility  of  a  scientific  evolution  of  the  sciences. 
For  to  teach  a  science  according  to  scientific 
method  involves  first,  individual  observation  of 
its  typical  facts ;  second,  discovery  of  the  relations 
subsisting  between  these  facts;  and,  finally,  in- 
sight into  the  principle  which  unifies  these  rela- 
tions. The  method  illustrated  in  School  and  So- 
ciety is  so  busy  with  the  relationship  of  each 
subject  to  every  other  that  it  cuts  itself  off  from 
the  consideration  of  any  particular  subject  as  a 
self-related  whole. 

MERIT    AND    DEFECT    OF    THE    SOCIALIZED    SCHOOL 

The  socialized  school  made  a  memorable  con- 
tribution to  scientific  pedagogy  in  its  effort  to 
guide  the  spontaneous  activities  of  childhood  tow- 
ard the  corresponding  values  of  life.  It  has, 
however,  undone  its  own  best  deed  by  assigning 
paramount  value  to  human  industries  and  by  its 
attempt  to  make  industries  "  articulating  centers 
for  science,  history,  literature,  and  art." 

In  defense  of  its  procedure  the  socialized  school 
invokes  the  principle  of  historic  recapitulation.     I 

»  See  Chapter  X  of  this  book,  pp.  291,  292. 


THE   LIVING   ISSUE  331 

have  tried  to  show  that  the  principle  invoked  con- 
demns its  procedure.  It  may  be  conceded  that 
each  science  is  related  to  a  corresponding  art,  but 
it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  final  spur  of 
scientific  activity  is  the  search  of  a  causative  agent 
for  a  causality  akin  to  its  own.  Literature  and 
the  fine  arts  are  projections  of  a  spirit  which  re- 
veals in  order  to  discover  itself.  The  first  book  of 
human  history  as  opposed  to  human  annals  was 
written  when  a  great  people  wakened  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  freedom.  Greece  refused  the  tribute 
of  earth  and  water  demanded  by  the  Persian 
king,  and  the  father  of  history  celebrated  the 
immortal  deeds  which  followed  hard  upon  her 
high  defiance.  Science,  literature,  art,  and  his- 
tory are  all  revelations  of  the  free,  self-creating, 
self-defining  activity  of  the  human  spirit.  It  may 
be  added  that  lacking  free  activity  man  could 
never  have  developed  and  organized  industries, 
but  must  have  remained  forever  "  a  root-digging, 
fruit-eating  animal."  ^ 

The  condensed  result  of  our  critical  discussion 
is  that  the  methods  of  the  socialized  school  have 
been  vitiated  by  an  erroneous  view  of  the  process 
of  historic  development.  This  misleading  inter- 
pretation of  history  in  turn  has  apparently  been 
provoked  by  the  conviction  that  the  sole  aim  of  the 

•  Industrial  Evolution,  Bucher,  p.  29. 


332  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

school  is  to  prepare  for  social  life,  combined  with 
a  conception  of  social  life  whose  almost  exclusive 
emphasis  is  upon  the  relationship  of  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  economic  organization.  It  is  true 
that  in  theoretic  presentations  of  its  ideal  we  are 
told  that  the  school  should  prepare  not  only  for 
industrial  activity  but  for  membership  in  the  fam- 
ily and  the  state.  Even  in  these  theoretic  presen- 
tations, however,  the  ideal  of  economic  efficiency 
is  paramount,  and  in  practice  it  becomes  not  only 
paramount  but  almost  exclusive  of  other  aims. 
The  result  is  that  the  socialized  school  fails  to 
make  adequate  provision  for  the  "  things  fertile 
of  distinctive  individuality."  In  the  choice  of 
subject  matter  preference  is  given  to  industries 
and  applied  science.  In  method  the  preponderant 
appeal  is  to  dry  and  frigid  understanding.  In 
character  the  qualities  most  valued  are  "  force, 
efficiency  in  execution,  initiative,  insistence,  per- 
sistence, courage,  and  industry."  ^  The  man 
whom  the  socialized  school  aims  to  produce  is  the 
worthy  and  efficient  member  of  a  developing  in- 
dustrial organization.  Gazing  upon  his  portrait  we 
understand  the  process  proposed  for  his  creation: 

We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  tremendous  industrial  and 
commercial  development.  New  inventions,  new  ma- 
chines, new  methods  of  transportation  and  intercourse 

•  Ethical  Principles  Underlying  Education,  p.  29. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  333 

are  making  over  the  whole  scene  of  action  year  by 
year.  It  is  an  absolute  impossibility  to  educate  the 
child  for  any  fixed  station  in  life.  So  far  as  education 
is  conducted  unconsciously  or  consciously  on  thia 
principle,  it  results  in  fitting  the  future  citizen  for 
no  station  in  life,  but  makes  him  a  drone,  a  hanger-on, 
or  an  actual  retarding  influence  in  the  onward  move- 
ment. Instead  of  caring  for  himself  and  others  he 
becomes  one  who  has  himself  to  he  cared  for.  Here, 
too,  the  ethical  responsibility  of  the  school  on  the 
social  side  must  be  interpreted  in  the  broadest  and 
freest  spirit;  it  is  equivalent  to  that  training  of  the 
child  which  will  give  him  such  possession  of  himself 
that  he  m,ay  take  charge  of  himself;  may  not  only 
adapt  himself  to  the  changes  that  are  going  on,  but 
have  power  to  shape  and  direct  those  changes/ 

>  Ethical  Principles  Underlying  Education,  p.  12.  (Italics 
mine.) 

I  hope  my  readers  will  understand  that  I  am  not  attacking 
the  need  of  that  form  of  education  which  prepares  for  indus- 
trial efficiency,  but  that  I  am  questioning  whether  this  form 
of  education  should  be  given  paramount  value  in  our  elemen- 
tary schools.  Dr.  Dewey  tells  us  that  "hardly  one  per  cent 
of  the  entire  school  population  ever  attains  to  what  we  call 
higher  education;  only  five  per  cent  to  the  grade  of  our  high 
school;  while  much  more  than  half  leave  on  or  before  the 
completion  of  the  fifth  year  of  the  elementary  grade." — School 
and  Society,  p.  42.  It  seems  to  me  a  great  mistake  to  lose 
our  short  opportunity  of  helping  children  to  create  a  larger 
personality  and  therefore  a  richer  life,  by  concentrating  our 
attention  upon  preparing  them  for  industrial  efficiency.  As 
a  recent  article  in  the  Outlook  points  out,  "An  education 
which  trains  men  only  to  make  a  living  and  does  not  fit  them 
to  make  a  life  would  sap  the  very  sources  of  inspiration  and 
make  a  monotonous  workshop  of  the  modern  world," 


334  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

"  Consider  the  ant,"  says  a  brilliant  contempo- 
rary essayist,  "  Consider  the  ant  and  beware  of 
her.  She  is  there  for  a  warning.  In  universal 
anthood  there  are  no  ants.  From  that  fate  may 
men  save  man."  ^  The  condemnation  of  the  so- 
cialized school  is  that  its  practice  "  engenders  in- 
distinction."  If  a  nation  be  great  in  proportion 
to  the  greatness  of  its  individuals  then  one  aim 
of  education  should  be  to  liberate  all  forms  of 
spiritual  energy,  to  accentuate  the  idea  of  personal 
distinction,  and  to  cultivate  not  only  practical  in- 
telligence and  efficiency  but  fine  perception,  sen- 
sitive feeling,  delicate  and  discriminating  taste, 
prescient  imagination  and  rational  insight.  Such 
an  education  will  have  in  view  not  only  or  chiefly 
the  efficient  member  of  a  developing  industrial 
system  but  the  statesman,  the  poet,  the  artist,  the 
spiritual  seer,  and  the  philosopher.  May  it  be  in 
part  because  education  has  been  overzealous  to 
give  practical  knowledge  that  America  is  failing 
to  produce  her  quota  of  great  individuals. 

The  t^iminance  of  industrial  ideals  has  not  only 
reacted  unfavorably  upon  the  school  curriculum 
but  has  also  created  a  false  conception  of  school 
discipline.  I  agree  with  Dr.  Dewey  that  "  order 
is  simply  a  thing  which  is  relative  to  an  end." 
The  kind  of  order  enforced  will  therefore  depend 

»  A  Modern  Symposium,  G.  Lowes  Dickinson,  p.  156. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  335 

upon  the  end  set.  If  the  aim  of  the  school  be  to 
prepare  for  social  life  and  if  participation  in  so- 
cial life  be  construed  to  mean  efficient  cooperation 
with  the  economic  organization  then,  manifestly 
the  school  must  be  transformed  into  an  embryonic 
community  of  industrial  type  and  its  order  will 
be  the  order  of  a  busy  workshop.  But  if  the  func- 
tions of  the  school  are  to  endow  the  individual  so 
far  as  possible  with  the  experience  of  the  race  and 
to  make  him  master  of  the  instrumentalities 
through  which  he  may  increasingly  assimilate  this 
experience,  then  its  discipline  must  conform  more 
nearly  to  that  sanctioned  by  the  best  tradition. 

There  is  one  feature  connected  with  the  substi- 
tution of  the  order  of  the  workshop  for  the  order 
of  the  traditional  school  which  has  not  received 
sufficient  attention.  In  the  actual  workshop  there 
is  work  which  must  be  done,  and  the  workmen  are 
there  to  do  it.  This  work  is  not  for  their  develop- 
ment. They  labor  for  the  sake  of  a  product  and 
the  great  lesson  they  learn  is  that  of  self-subordi- 
nation. In  the  socialized  school,  on  the  ontrary, 
"  the  typical  occupations  followed  are  freed  from 
all  economic  stress,"  and  "  the  aim  is  not  the  eco- 
nomic value  of  the  products  but  the  development 
of  social  power  and  insight."  ^  In  other  words, 
the  order  of  the  workshop  is  dissociated  from  the 


>  School  and  Society,  p.  32. 
24 


336  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

purposes  of  the  workshop;  is,  therefore,  not  rela- 
tive to  its  own  end  and  losing  this  relation  cannot 
be  maintained. 

One  of  the  most  valuable  lessons  of  history  is 
the  ruin  which  results  when  one  institution  bor- 
rows the  form  and  usurps  the  function  of  another. 
The  socialized  school  borrows  the  form  and  usurps 
the  function  of  civil  society  and  thereby  condemns 
itself.  Civil  society  is  the  institution  through 
whose  organizing  agency  each  individual  profits 
by  the  labor  of  the  social  whole  and  in  return  con- 
tributes to  the  whole  his  mite  of  service.  The 
principle  of  this  great  institution  is  economy. 
Human  power  is  economized  through  the  speciali- 
zation of  vocations.  By  making  it  possible  for 
each  individual  to  do  something  which  in  virtue 
of  natural  aptitude  he  can  do  rapidly,  easily,  and 
well,  the  amount  of  production  is  increased  and 
the  drudgery  of  life  diminished.  Furthermore, 
specialized  vocations  increase  the  dependence  of 
each  individual  upon  all  others  and  thereby  con- 
tribute to  the  solidarity  of  society.  The  educa- 
tional influence  of  participation  in  the  activities 
of  civil  society  is  very  great,  but  it  is  dependent 
upon  the  existence  of  actual  duties  and  genuine 
responsibilities.  When  the  school  models  herself 
upon  the  economic  organization  she  does  its  educa- 
tional work  badly  and  minimizes  her  ability  to 
do  her  own. 


THE  LIVING  ISSUE  337 

THE    METHOD    OF    FROEBEL    VERSUS    THE    METHOD 
OF    THE    SOCIALIZED    SCHOOL 

If  the  questioning  kindergartner  for  whom  this 
book  is  written  has  followed  me  as  I  have  explored 
my  consciousness,  she  should  now  be  aware  of  the 
contrast  between  the  method  of  Froebel  and  the 
method  of  the  socialized  school.  The  reason  for 
this  contrast  should  also  be  apparent  to  her  mind. 
Both  forms  of  education  accept  as  their  point  of 
^^^^eparture  the  spontaneous  activities  of  childhood. 
Both  confess  that  from  among  such  activities  those 
which  relate  to  the  values  of  life  must  be  selected. 
The  procedure  of  the  socialized  school,  however, 
is  dominated  by  the  assumptions  that  all  man  is 
he  has  made  himself  in  and  through  the  historic 
process  and  that  the  "  articulating  centers  "  of  this 
process  have  been  industrial  avocations  deter- 
mined by  geographical  environment.  Recapitulat- 
ing this  process  it  seeks  to  relate  literature,  science, 
art,  and  history  to  industries.  The  method  of  the 
traditional  kindergarten,  on  the  contrary,  presup- 
poses that  both  the  great  human  values  and  the 
manifestations  of  childhood  which  point  toward 
them,  are  primal  outpourings  of  the  free  human 
spirit. 

The  kindergartner  who  participates  in  this  in- 
sight will  reject  the  idea  that  children  need  ex- 
traneous motives  to  induce   them  to  dance   and 


338  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

sing,  play  dramatic  games,  string  beads,  arrange 
pebbles  or  tablets;  build,  draw,  paint,  model,  in- 
vestigate, or  listen  to  fairy  tales.  Her  aim  will  be 
to  call .  forth  the  varying  forms  of  self-creative 
\activity;  her  emphasis  will  be  npon  the  artist  as 
i  opposed  to  the  artisan ;  her  supreme  desire  will  be 
to  stir  those  primal  affections  which  are  the  emo- 
tional equivalents  of  our  religious,  ethical,  politi- 
cal, and  aesthetic  ideals,  and  the  characteristic  fea- 
ture of  her  method  will  be  appeal  to  imagination 
through  typical  acts,  facts,  characters,  relations, 
and  processes.^ 

In  so  far  as  the  methods  of  the  socialized  school 
have  reacted  upon  the  kindergarten  they  have  re- 
sulted in  the  substitution  of  work  for  that  media- 
torial activity  wherein  the  form  of  play  is 
freighted  with  ideal  values.  They  have  likewise 
substituted  appeal  to  understanding  for  appeal  to 
imagination,  and  they  have  galvanized  into  spas- 
modic activity  the  moribund  theory  of  concentra- 
tion. The  living  issue  between  kindergartners  is 
whether  the  influence  of  these  reactions  shall  per- 
sist. The  indications  are  that  their  prestige  is 
waning  and  that  their  hour  of  prevailing  vogue 
draws  to  its  close. 

» See  Chapter  II. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THKEE    WORLD    VIEWS 

In  that  great  soul  drama  which  faces  all  the 
problems,  wrestles  with  all  the  doubts,  and  battles 
with  all  the  sins  of  the  modern  world  there  are 
two  contrasting  passages  whose  structural  signifi- 
cance escapes  the  notice  of  many  readers.  The 
first  is  the  soliloquy  in  which  Faust,  immediately 
before  signing  his  compact  with  the  devil,  curses 
the  whole  world-order,  and  as  the  climax  of  his 
blasphemy  curses  patience  most  of  all.  The  sec- 
ond is  the  passage  in  which  the  aged  Faust,  recon- 
ciled to  the  world-order,  denounces  the  impatient 
and  inconsiderate  deed  through  which  Baucis  and 
Philemon  lost  their  lives,  and  shakes  himself  for- 
ever free  from  the  toils  of  Mephistopheles.  Be- 
tween the  curse  directed  against  an  arbitrary  and 
malignant  universe,  and  the  denunciation  of  a 
deed  done  in  violation  of  the  nature  of  an  altru- 
istic universe,  the  poem  runs  its  redeeming  course. 

The  curse  upon  the  world-order  follows  the 
scene  in  which  Faust  makes  a  last  vain  struggle 
to  hold  his  faith  in  God.  As  the  result  of  all  his 
339 


340  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

study  he  has  come  to  the  conclusion  that  nothing 
can  be  known.  Therefore,  the  loves,  the  hopes, 
the  aspirations  of  life  are  lying  dreams.  With 
inexorable  logic  Faust  curses  hope,  for  there  is 
nothing  to  look  forward  to ;  curses  faith,  for  there 
is  nothing  to  be  believed;  and  curses  patience 
most  of  all,  for  why  should  man,  the  conscious 
and  suffering  product  of  an  unconscious  universe, 
submit  patiently  to  the  stings  and  arrows  of  his 
outrageous  fortune? 

The  mental  attitude  of  imprecation  is  frequent 
in  contemporary  literature.  To  give  only  a  single 
example  the  following  passage  from  Maeterlinck's 
Life  of  the  Bee  reads  almost  like  a  repetition  of 
the  curse  of  Faust.  "  Human  consciousness  is 
probably  the  most  surprising  phenomenon  this 
world  contains.  It  is  this  which  permits  us  to 
raise  our  head  before  the  unknown  principle  and 
say  to  it:  What  you  are  I  know  not,  but  there 
is  something  within  me  that  already  enfolds  you. 
You  will  destroy  me,  perhaps,  but  if  your  object 
be  not  to  construct  from  my  ruins  an  organism 
better  than  mine,  you  will  prove  yourself  inferior 
to  what  I  am  and  the  silence  which  will  follow 
the  death  of  the  race  to  which  I  belong  will  declare 
to  you  that  you  have  been  judged.  And  if  you 
are  not  capable  even  of  caring  if  you  be  justly 
judged  or  not,  of  what  value  can  your  secret  be  ? 
It  must  be  stupid  or  hideous.    Chance  has  enabled 


THREE  WORLD   VIEWS  341 

you  to  produce  a  creature  that  you  yourself  lacked 
the  quality  to  produce.  It  is  fortunate  for  him 
that  a  contrary  chance  should  have  permitted  you 
to  suppress  him  before  he  had  fathomed  the  depths 
of  your  unconsciousness ;  more  fortunate  still  that 
he  does  not  survive  the  infinite  series  of  your 
awful  experiments.  He  had  nothing  to  do  in  a 
world  where  his  intellect  corresponded  to  no  eter- 
nal intellect,  where  his  desire  for  the  better  could 
attain  no  actual  good." 

This  passage  states  the  haunting  issue  in  men's 
souls  with  the  greatest  precision.  Man  is  con- 
scious. If  there  be  no  eternal  consciousness  to 
which  his  consciousness  corresponds,  he  is  an  out- 
cast of  the  universe. 

THE  PHILOSOPHY  OF   NATUEALISM 

"  I  have  swept  space  with  my  telescope,"  says 
Lalande,  "  and  found  no  God."  The  picture 
which  materialistic  science  unveils  before  the 
mind's  eye  is  that  of  a  chance  and  purposeless 
process.  "  While  the  embryo  of  a  new  world  is 
being  formed  from  a  nebula  in  one  comer  of 
the  vast  stage  of  the  universe,  another  has  con- 
densed into  a  rotating  sphere  of  liquid  fire  in 
some  far-distant  spot ;  a  third  has  already  cast 
off  rings  at  its  equator  which  round  themselves 
into  planets;  a  fourth  has  become  a  vast  sun 
whose  planets  have  formed  a  secondary  retinue  of 


342  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

moons."  Thus  are  the  worlds  born  but  they  are 
born  only  to  die,  for  "  after  a  while  the  frozen 
moons  shall  fall  onto  their  planets;  the  planets 
onto  their  suns.  Two  distant  suns  perhaps  al- 
ready stark  and  cold  rush  together  with  incon- 
ceivable force  and  melt  away  into  nebulous  clouds, 
and  such  prodigious  heat  is  generated  by  the  col- 
lision that  the  nebula  is  once  more  raised  to  in- 
candescence and  the  old  drama  begins  again."  * 

The  universe  thus  described  is  a  mad  dance;  a 
nauseating  whirl  from  nothingness  to  nothingness. 
Our  earth  is  one  of  the  partners  in  its  backward 
and  forward  swing,  and  upon  its  surface  life  in  all 
its  stages  enacts  a  monstrous  drama.  In  the  plant 
world  individual  is  arrayed  against  individual, 
species  against  species,  and  scarcely  a  speck  of 
earth  can  be  found  where  warfare  is  not  as  cease- 
less as  it  is  cruel.  In  like  manner  every  animal 
preys  upon  other  animals  and  is  in  turn  preyed 
upon  by  creatures  frenzied  with  the  blind  strug- 
gle for  life.  Moreover,  with  sensibility  is  bom 
malignant  passion  and  the  mad  dance  of  stars  and 
planets,  the  mad  slaughter  of  the  vegetable  world 
begins  to  feel  itself  in  the  animal  world  as  lust, 
hatred,  cruelty,  revenge,  and  murderous  impulse. 
Human  history  presents  a  spectacle  of  similar  ma- 
lignity  and   futility.      Its   incitements   are   fated 

»  Haeckel,  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe.    Translated  by 
Joseph  McCabe,  pp.  72,  73. 


THREE  WORLD   VIEWS  343 

emotions  and  fated  ideas  for  every  feeling  which 
stirs  the  human  breast,  "  every  decision  at  which 
mankind  have  arrived  and  every  consequent  action 
which  they  have  performed  was  implicitly  deter- 
mined by  the  quantity  and  distribution  of  the 
various  forms  of  matter  and  energy  which  pre- 
ceded the  birth  of  the  solar  system."  *  The  out- 
come of  this  fatal  history  is  a  common  grave  for 
the  successive  races  and  nations  which  for  a  brief 
hour  strut  across  earth's  tragic  stage.  "  Final 
wreck  and  tragedy,"  says  Professor  James,  "  is  of 
the  essence  of  scientific  materialism  as  at  present 
understood.  The  lower  and  not  the  higher  forces 
are  the  eternal  forces  or  the  last  surviving  forces 
within  the  only  cycle  of  evolution  which  we  can 
definitely  see."  ^ 

THE    EEACTION    AGAINST    NATUEALISM 

Against  final  wreck  and  tragedy  the  human 
mind  rebels,  and  alike  in  contemporary  novels 
and  essays  and  in  contemporary  psychology  and 
philosophy  may  be  discerned  the  effort  of  thought 
to  free  itself  from  the  disheartening  conclusions 
of  materialistic  science.  The  novelists  who  a  few 
years  ago  could  portray  nothing  but  the  fatal  con- 
flict of  blind  passions,  and  some  of  whom,  carried 
away  by  their  interest  in  instinct  preferred  ani- 

'  The  Foundations  of  Belief,  Balfour,  p.  20. 
»  Pragmatism,  William  James,  p.  105. 


344  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

mal  to  human  heroes,  are  now  depicting  men  and 
women  who  take  their  "  fighting  chance "  and 
with  resolute  will  attack  hereditary  evil.  Essay- 
ists are  writing  of  individual  and  national  pur- 
poses as  opposed  to  individual  and  national  im- 
pulses. Science  suspects  that  natural  selection 
cannot  fully  account  for  evolution,  and  that  in 
attempting  to  explain  the  history  of  the  organic 
world  we  must  give  due  weight  to  the  action  of 
human  and  animal  intelligence.  Psychology  dis- 
covers that  in  virtue  of  "  the  part  played  by  vol- 
untary attention  in  volition  a  belief  in  free  will 
and  purely  spiritual  causation  is  still  open  to 
us."  *  The  conviction  gains  currency  that  the 
atoms  out  of  which  science  evolves  the  universe 
are  nothing  but  naive  projections  of  man's  own 
sensations,  and  that  its  assumed  unknowable  force 
is  a  projection  of  his  blind  will.  Thought  shifts 
its  center  of  gravity  from  the  outer  to  the  inner 
world  and  once  again  mal^s  man  "  the  measure 
of  all  things."  A  cheering  revival  of  faith,  hope, 
and  courage  begins  to  make  itself  felt.  The  essay- 
ist, who  incontestably  interprets  most  sympathetic- 
ally the  consciousness  of  his  contemporaries,  jus- 
tifies this  revival  by  the  following  reasons: 

* 
We  are  just  at  the  moment  when  a  thousand  new 
reasons  for  having  confidence  in  the  destinies  of  our 

»  Talks  to  Teachers,  William  James,  p.  191. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  345 

kind  are  being  born  around  U3.  For  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  centuries  we  have  occupied  this  earth; 
and  the  greatest  dangers  seem  past.  They  were  so 
threatening  that  we  have  escaped  them  only  by  a 
chance  that  cannot  occur  more  than  once  in  a  thou- 
sand times  in  the  history  of  the  worlds.  The  earth 
still  too  young  was  poising  its  continents,  its  islands, 
and  its  seas  before  fixing  them.  The  central  fire,  the 
first  master  of  the  planet,  was  at  every  moment  burst- 
ing from  its  granite  prison;  and  the  globe,  hesitating 
in  space,  wandered  among  greedy  and  hostile  stars 
ignorant  of  their  laws.  Our  undetermined  faculties 
floated  blindly  in  our  bodies,  like  the  nebulae  in  the 
ether;  a  mere  nothing  could  have  destroyed  our  hu- 
man future  at  the  groping  hours  when  our  brain  was 
forming  itself,  when  the  network  of  our  nerves  was 
branching  out.  To-day  the  instability  of  the  seas  and 
the  uprisings  of  the  central  fire  are  infinitely  less  to 
be  feared;  in  any  case  it  is  unlikely  that  they  will 
bring  about  any  more  universal  catastrophes.  As  for 
the  third  peril,  collision  with  a  stray  star,  we  may  be 
permitted  to  believe  we  shall  be  granted  the  few  cen- 
turies of  respite  necessary  for  us  to  learn  how  to  ward 
it  off.  When  we  see  what  we  have  done  and  what  we 
are  on  the  point  of  doing,  it  is  not  absurd  to  hope  that 
one  day  we  shall  lay  hold  of  that  essential  secret  of 
the  worlds  which,  for  the  time  being,  and  to  soothe 
our  ignorance  (even  as  we  soothe  a  child  and  lull  it 
to  sleep  by  repeating  to  it  meaningless  and  monoto- 
nous words)  we  have  called  the  law  of  gravitation. 
There  is  nothing  mad  in  supposing  that  the  secret  of 
this  sovereign  force  lies  hidden  within  us  or  around 
us  within  reach  of  our  hand.  It  is  perhaps  tractable 
and  docile,  even  as  light  and  electricity;  it  is  per- 


346  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

haps  wholly  spiritual,  and  depends  upon  a  very  simple 
cause  which  the  displacing  of  an  object  may  reveal 
to  118.  The  discovery  of  an  unexpected  property  of 
matter,  analogous  to  that  which  has  just  disclosed 
to  us  the  disconcerting  qualities  of  radium,  may  lead 
us  straight  to  the  very  sources  of  the  energy  and  life 
of  the  stars;  and  from  that  moment  man's  lot  would 
be  changed  and  the  earth,  definitely  saved,  would 
become  eternal.  It  would,  at  our  pleasure,  draw 
closer  to  or  farther  from  the  centers  of  heat  and 
light;  it  would  flee  from  worn-out  suns  and  go  in 
search  of  unsuspected  fluids,  forces  and  lives,  in  the 
orbit  of  virgin  and  inexhaustible  worlds.^ 

Hope  revives  "  when  we  see  what  we  have  done 
and  what  we  are  doing."  The  most  characteristic 
feature  of  contemporary  thought  is  the  transfer  of 
attention  from  instinct  to  will,  from  human  pas- 
sions to  human  purposes.  Singularly  enough 
there  seems  a  lack  of  agreement  as  to  what  these 
purposes  should  be.  The  end  of  man  is  assumed 
to  be  action.  But  action  itself  needs  a  final  end 
and  what  this  final  end  should  be  our  prophets 
seem  not  to  know. 

"  The  golden  rule  is  that  there  should  be  no 
golden  rule."  Into  this  pointed  epigram  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  condenses  the  result  of  a  fashion 
of  thought  which,  while  recognizing  human  voli- 
tion, tends  to  disparage  human  reason  by  conceiv- 

'The  Double  Garden,  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  pp.  341-344. 
Translated  by  Alexander  Teixeira  de  Mattes.     (Italics  mine.) 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  347 

ing  it  as  nothing  but  a  weapon  forged  by  will  for 
the  accomplishment  of  its  blind  purposes.  We  can- 
not depend  upon  any  of  our  present  moral  impera- 
tives because  they  represent  "  merely  temporary 
adaptations  made  in  the  struggle  for  existence." 
"  The  will  of  man  is  forever  outgrowing  his  ideals, 
and  therefore  conformity  to  them  is  constantly 
producing  results  no  less  tragic  than  those  which 
follow  the  violation  of  ideals  which  are  still 
valid."  *  Men  "  ought  to  be  as  careful  how  they 
yield  to  a  temptation  to  tell  the  truth  as  to  a  temp- 
tation to  hold  their  tongues  " ;  and  as  for  women, 
"  the  desirability  of  their  preserving  their  chas- 
tity depends  just  as  much  on  circumstances  as  the 
desirability  of  taking  a  cab  instead  of  walking."  ^ 
The  taking  of  life  is  a  frequent  duty.  The  heredi- 
tary criminal  "  is  a  coil  of  wild  serpents  which 
seldom  are  at  rest  with  each  other,-  thus  singly 
they  depart  to  search  for  prey  in  the  world."  ^ 
He  should  be  put  out  of  existence  through  love  for 
the  beyond  man  toward  whom  life  is  striving.* 

« Ibsen,  Bernard  Shaw.  '  Ibid. 

» Thus  Spake  Zarathustra,  Nietsche,  p.  46. 

*  "The  role,  then,  of  those  whom  our  plan  would  eliminate 
consists  of  the  following  classes  of  individuals  coming  under 
the  absolute  control  of  the  date;  idiots,  imbeciles,  epileptics, 
habitual  drunkards,  and  insane  criminals;  the  larger  number 
of  murderers;  nocturnal  housebreakers,  srich  criminals,  what- 
ever their  offense  a^  might  through  their  constitutional  organiza- 
tion appear  very  dangerous ;  and,  finally,  criminals  who  might 


348  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

As  defective  organization  makes  life  worthless,  so 
hopeless  disease  makes  it  a  prolonged  misery.  The 
responsibility  of  ending  it  may  be  freely  assumed 
by  individual  physicians  and  nurses.  The  Ten 
Commandments  have  not  only  budged  but  toppled 
to  pieces,  and  as  we  learn  from  one  of  the  most 
widely  read  novels  of  the  hour  "  La  vraie  morale 
se  moque  de  la  morale."  ^ 

In  so  far  as  the  adaptive  ingenuity  with  which 
it  is  proposed  we  should  replace  "  our  conven- 
tional morality  "  sets  itself  any  ends,  these  ends 
seem  to  be  the  preservation  of  healthy  human 
life  and  the  improvement  of  the  human  brain. 
"  Believe  me,"  says  the  spokesman  of  the  new 
ideal  in  Maeterlinck's  drama  of  Monna  Vanna, 
"  believe  me  nothing  is  worth  a  life  that  one 
saves ;  all  the  virtues,  all  the  ideals  of  man,  all 
that  he  calls  honor,  fidelity,  and  the  like,  seem 
but  a  child's  game  in  comparison."  ^  "  Life," 
declares  the  hero  of  Mr.  Shaw's  drama,  Man 
and  Superman,  "  is  a  force  which  has  made  in- 
numerable experiments  in  organizing  itself  .  .  . 

be  adjudged  incorrigible.  Each  individual  of  these  classes 
would  undergo  thorough  examination,  and  only  by  due  process 
of  law  would  his  life  be  taken  from  him." — Heredity  and 
Human  Progress,  by  W.  Duncan  McKim,  M.D.,  Ph.D.,  p. 
192.     (Italics  mine.) 

>  The  Fruit  of  the  Tree,  by  Edith  Wharton. 

'  Monna  Vanna,  translated  by  Alexis  Ir6n^  Du  Pont 
Coleman,  p.  24. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  349 

the  mammoth  and  the  man,  the  mouse  and  tho 
megatherium,  the  flies  and  the  fleas,  and  the 
fathers  of  the  church,  are  all  more  or  less  suc- 
cessful attempts  to  build  up  that  raw  force  into 
higher  and  higher  individuals,  the  ideal  indi- 
vidual being  omnipotent,  omniscient,  infallible, 
and  withal  completely,  unilludedly  self-conscious; 
in  short,  a  god."  *  With  this  effort  of  life  man- 
kind must  conspire.  "  Liberty  is  no  longer  catho- 
lic enough,"  and  hereafter  "  men  will  die  for 
human  perfection  to  which  they  will  sacrifice  all 
their  liberty  gladly."  ^  The  way  to  create  this 
human  perfection  is  by  getting  "  better  births  and 
a  better  result  from  the  births  we  get,"  ^  and  "  any 
collective  human  enterprise,  institution,  move- 
ment, party,  or  state  is  to  be  judged  as  a  whole 
and  completely,  as  it  conduces  more  or  less  to 
wholesome  and  hopeful  births,  and  according  to 
the  qualitative  and  quantitative  advance  due  to  its 
influence  made  by  each  generation  of  citizens  bom 
under  its  influence  toward  a  higher  and  ampler 
standard  of  life."  * 

I  have  tried  to  indicate  as  briefly  as  possible 
the  more  marked  tendencies  of  contemporary  lit- 
erature.    Their  point  of  departure  is  a  transfer 

>  Man  and  Superman,  pp.  113,  114.  » Ibid.,  p.  110. 

«  Mankind  in  the  Making,  H.  G.  Wells,  p.  30. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  19.     The  same  ideal  is  presented  in  a  novel  by 
this  author  entitled  The  Food  of  the  Gods. 


350  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

of  interest  from  instinct  to  will  conceived  as  free 
and  indeterminate.  Their  point  of  arrest  would 
seem  to  be  the  repudiation  of  "  absolute  standards 
and  eternal  values."  Intellect  is  conceived  as  the 
tool  of  a  sovereign  though  rather  blind  energy  of 
volition.  This  energy  must  perforce  act,  but  the 
brains  it  has  thus  far  created  are  able  to  conceive 
■with  clarity  only  proximate  ends.  It  will  there- 
fore concentrate  effort  upon  improving  the  in- 
strument of  intellection,  will  frankly  recognize 
that  the  purpose  set  involves  "  a  transvaluation 
of  all  moral  values,"  and  will  relegate  final  prob- 
lems to  the  greater  humanity  it  aspires  to  create. 
When  it  has  made  superman,  possibly,  he  may 
know  what  is  worth  doing. 

Each  age  has  problems  peculiar  to  itself.  Its 
solutions  of  these  problems  are  reflected  in  its  lit- 
erature and  later  interpreted  by  its  philosophy. 
Feeling,  action,  imagination,  and  discursive  re- 
flection must  always  outrun  philosophy,  because 
philosophy  is  consciousness  exploring,  inventory- 
ing, organizing,  and  explaining  its  own  content. 
The  philosophy  which  most  nearly  interprets  the 
content  of  much  contemporary  thought  is  begin- 
ning to  be  generally  known  as  Pragmatism.* 

»  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  Pragmatism  indorses  all  the 
subversive  opinions  which  have  found  expression  in  literature. 
It  is,  however,  undoubtedly  attacking  the  same  problems  as 
contemporary  literature  and  making  analogous  though  not 
identical  solutions. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  351 


pragmatism: 


In  his  Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychol- 
ogy Professor  Baldwin  defines  Pragmatism  as 
"  the  opinion  that  metaphysics  is  to  be  largely 
cleared  up  by  the  application  of  the  following 
maxim  for  attaining  clearness  of  apprehension: 
"  Consider  what  effects,  that  might  conceivably 
have  practical  bearings,  we  conceive  the  object  of 
our  conception  to  have.  Then  our  conception  of 
these  effects  is  the  whole  of  our  conception  of  the 
object." 

Strictly  speaking  the  above  definition  applies 
only  to  the  pragmatic  method.  It  is  vindicated  by 
the  fact  that  it  was  as  a  method  alone  that  prag- 
matism made  its  modest  debut  upon  the  stage  of 
thought.  The  word  Pragmatism  Professor  James 
tells  us,  "  was  first  introduced  into  philosophy  by 
Mr.  Charles  S.  Peirce,"  "  who  in  an  article  en- 
titled How  to  Make  Our  Ideas  Clear "  pointed 
out  "  that  our  beliefs  are  really  rules  for  action," 
and  urged  "  that  to  develop  a  thought's  meaning 
we  need  only  determine  what  conduct  it  is  fitted 
to  produce."  ^  "  To  attain  perfect  clearness  in 
our  thoughts  of  an  object,"  adds  Professor  James, 
"  we  need  only  consider  what  conceivable  effects 
of  a  practical  kind  the  object  may  involve — ^what 


»  Pragmatism,  William  James,  p.  46. 
25 


352  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

sensations  we  are  to  expect  from  it,  and  what  re- 
actions we  must  prepare.  Ovir  conception  of  these 
effects,  whether  immediate  or  remote,  is  then  for  us 
the  whole  of  our  conception  of  the  object,  so  far  as 
that  conception  has  positive  significance  at  all."  ^ 

In  brief,  the  pragmatic  method  is  that  which 
tests  ideas  by  their  consequences.  Its  Achilles 
tendon  is  that  it  lacks  any  criterion  by  which  to 
test  these  consequences  themselves.  Professor 
James  admits  that  pragmatism  has  to  postpone 
dogmatic  answer  with  regard  to  the  truth  of  any 
form  of  religion  because  pragmatists  do  not  "  yet 
know  certainly  which  type  of  religion  is  going  to 
work  best  in  the  long  run."  ^  But  how  can  a  con- 
sistent pragmatist  ever  know  what  religion  will 
work  "  best  ?  "  Upon  his  own  principle  who  or 
what  shall  decide  that  "  best "  whose  working  is 
the  criterion  of  selection  ?  Lacking  an  eternal  and 
absolute  standard  for  the  "  Best  "  he  can  never 
know  the  true.  Neither,  it  may  be  added,  can  he 
know  the  good,  and  hence  his  estimate  of  moral 
values  must  be  as  shifting  and  uncertain  as  his  es- 
timate of  religious  values.  Is  he  not  in  the  same 
case  with  our  literary  prophets  who,  sure  as  they 
are  that  "  the  end  of  man  is  action,"  seem  unable 
to  find  for  action  any  final  and  consistent  ends  ?  ^ 

»  Pragmatism,  p.  47.  '  Ibid.,  p.  300. 

3  The  doctrine  (Pragmatism)  appears  to  assume  that  the 
end  of  man  is  action.  ...  If  it  be  admitted,  on  the  contrary. 


THREE   WORLD   VIEWS  353 

A  dilemma  so  obvious  as  the  one  suggested 
could  not  fail  to  escape  the  notice  of  pragmatists 
themselves.  Its  solution  has  been  attempted  by 
the  extension  of  pragmatism  from  a  method  of 
philosophic  procedure  to  a  theory  of  truth.  As  a 
method,  pragmatism  asks  what  will  work?  As  a 
theory  of  truth  it  is  the  conviction  that  ideas  be- 
come true  in  so  far  as  they  accomplish  the  work 
of  uniting  new  experience  with  old.  "  Any  idea 
upon  which  we  can  ride,  so  to  speak ;  any  idea  that 
will  carry  us  prosperously  from  any  one  part  of 
our  experience  to  any  other  part,  linking  things 
satisfactorily,  working  securely,  simplifying,  sav- 
ing labor ;  is  true  for  just  so  much,  true  in  so  far 
forth,  true  instrumentally."  ^ 

This  instrumental  theory  of  truth  was  reached, 
as  Professor  James  points  out,  by  generalizing  the 
process  through  which  men  settle  into  new  opin- 
ions. "  The  individual  has  a  stock  of  old  opinions 
already,  but  he  meets  a  new  experience  that  puts 
them  to  a  strain.  Somebody  contradicts  them ;  or 
in  a  reflective  moment  he  discovers  that  they  con- 
that  action  wants  an  end  and  that  that  end  must  be  something 
of  a  general  description,  then  the  spirit  of  the  maxim  itself, 
which  is,  that  we  must  look  to  the  upshot  of  our  concepts  in 
order  rightly  to  apprehend  them,  would  direct  us  toward 
something  different  from  practical  facts,  namely,  to  general 
ideas." — Dictionary  of  Philosophy  and  Psychology,  by  James 
Mark  Baldwin. 

»  Pragmatism,  William  James,  p.  58. 


354  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

tradict  each  other ;  or  he  hears  of  facts  with  which 
they  are  incompatible;  or  desires  arise  in  him 
which  they  cease  to  satisfy.  The  result  is  an  in- 
ward trouble  to  which  his  mind  till  then  had  been 
a  stranger,  and  from  which  he  seeks  to  escape  by 
modifying  his  previous  mass  of  opinions.  He 
saves  as  much  of  it  as  he  can,  for  in  this  matter 
of  belief  we  are  all  extreme  conservatives.  So  he 
tries  to  change  first  this  opinion,  and  then  that 
(for  they  resist  change  very  variously),  until  at 
last  some  new  idea  comes  up  which  he  can  graft 
upon  the  ancient  stock  with  a  minimum  of  dis- 
turbance of  the  latter,  some  idea  that  mediates  be- 
tween the  stock  and  the  new  experience  and  runs 
them  into  one  another  most  felicitously  and  ex- 
pediently." 

"  The  new  idea  is  then  adopted  as  the  true  one. 
It  preserves  the  older  stock  of  truth  with  a  mini- 
mum of  modification."  .  .  .  The  most  violent 
revolution  in  an  individual's  beliefs  leave  most  of 
his  old  order  standing.  .  .  .  New  truth  is  always 
a  go-between,  a  smoother  over  of  transition.  It 
marries  old  opinion  to  new  fact  so  as  ever  to  show 
a  minimum  of  jolt,  a  maximum  of  continuity. 
.  .  .  The  reasons  why  we  call  things  true  is  the 
reason  why  they  are  true,  for  to  be  true  means 
only  to  perform  this  marriage  function."  * 

Justice  to  the   pragmatic  conception  of  truth 

» Pmgmatisni,  pp.  59-64. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  355 

demands  explicit  recognition  of  the  fact  that  man 
is  conceived  not  as  its  sole  creator,  but  only  as  one 
of  the  participant  agencies  in  its  continuous  crea- 
tion. This  limitation  of  man's  creative  function 
redeems  the  pragmatic  doctrine  from  the  reproach 
that  it  destroys  all  objective  standards.  Reality 
exists ;  it  is  "  something  resisting  yet  malleable."  * 
This  resisting  yet  malleable  reality  consists  of 
"  the  flux  of  our  sensations  .  .  .  the  relations 
that  obtain  between  our  sensations  or  between 
their  copies  in  our  minds,"  ^  and,  finally,  of 
"  the  previous  truths  of  which  every  new  inquiry 
must  take  account."  ^  According  to  pragmatism 
man  is  "  pent  in  .  .  .  between  the  whole  body  of 
funded  truths  squeezed  from  the  past  and  the  co- 
ercions of  the  world  of  sense  about  him."  *  He 
feels  the  "  immense  pressure  of  objective  con- 
trol." *  On  the  other  hand  "  in  our  cognitive  as 
well  as  in  our  active  life,  we  are  creative.  We 
add  both  to  the  subject  and  the  predicate  part  of 
reality.  The  world  stands  really  malleablef  wait- 
ing to  receive  its  final  touches  at  our  hands.  Like 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  it  suffers  human  violence 
willingly.     Man  engenders  truths  upon  it."  ^ 

Not  only  are  such  truths  as  we  possess  man- 
made,    but   man   might   have   made    quite    other 

>  Pragmatism,  p.  258.  » Ibid.,  p.  244. 

» Ibid.,  p.  245.  •  Ibid.,  p.  233. 

» Ibid.,  p.  257. 


356  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

truths.  Common  sense,  for  example,  means  in 
philosophy  the  "  use  of  certain  intellectual  forms 
or  categories  of  thought."  ^  These  categories  or 
"  fundamental  ways  of  thinking  about  things  are 
discoveries  of  exceedingly  remote  ancestors  which 
have  been  able  to  preserve  themselves  through- 
^  out  the  experience  of  all  subsequent  time.^  .  .  . 
"  Like  our  five  fingers,  our  ear  bones,  our  rudi- 
mentary caudal  appendage,  or  our  other  vestigial 
peculiarities,  they  may  remain  as  indelible  tokens 
of  events  in  our  race  history.  Our  ancestors  may 
at  certain  moments  have  struck  into  ways  of  think- 
ing which  they  might  conceivably  not  have  found. 
But  once  they  did  so  and  after  the  fact  the  inheri- 
tance continues.  When  you  begin  a  piece  of  music 
in  a  certain  key,  you  must  keep  the  key  to  the 
end."  ^  The  categories  of  common  sense  are 
merely  working  hypotheses.  They  seem,  more- 
over, to  be  products  of  our  psycho-physical  organ- 
isms, for  we  read  that  "  were  we  lobsters  or  bees 
it  might  be  that  our  organization  would  have  led 
to  our  using  quite  different  modes  from  these  of 
apprehending  our  experiences.  It  might  be,  too 
(we   cannot   dogmatically   deny   this),   that  such 


'  Pragmatism,  p.  171.  The  following  enumeration  of  these 
categories  is  given  on  p.  173.  Thing;  The  Same  or  Different; 
Kinds;  Minds;  Bodies;  One  Time;  One  Space;  Subjects  and 
Attributes;  Causal  Influences;  The  Fancied;  The  Real. 

»/Wd.,  p.  170.  *lhid.,  pp.  169-70. 


/ 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  357 

categories  unimaginable  by  us  to-day  would  have 
proved  on  the  whole  as  serviceable  for  handling 
our  experiences  as  those  which  we  actually  use."  * 

The  net  outcome  of  the  pragmatic  doctrine  is 
that  "  to  an  unascertainable  extent  our  truths  are 
man-made  products."  ^  The  "  trail  of  the  human 
serpent,"  as  Professor  James  himself  declares,  "  is 
thus  over  everything."  ^  "  The  question  What  is 
the  truth  ?  is  no  real  question  (being  irrelevant 
to  all  conditions)  .  .  .  the  whole  notion  of  the 
truth  is  an  abstraction  from  truths  in  the  plural, 
a  mere  useful  summarizing  phrase  like  the  Latin 
language,  or  the  law,"  ^  "  The  true,  to  put  it 
very  briefly,  is  only  the  expedient  in  the  way  of 
our  thinking,  just  as  '  the  right '  is  only  the  ex- 
pedient in  the  way  of  our  behaving."  ^ 

With  the  dissolution  of  the  right  and  the  true 
into  the  expedient  the  accord  of  pragmatism  with 
the  spirit  of  contemporary  literature  becomes  evi- 
dent. Into  the  lineage  of  both  enters  the  presup- 
position that  truth  conceived  as  correspondence 
vrith  eternal  reality  is  nonexistent,  and  this,  for 

'  Pragmatism,  p.  171.     (Italics  mine.) 

Professor  Schiller  seems  to  me  rather  more  respectful  to  our 
actual  categories  than  Professor  James.  He  says:  "I  have 
faith  that  the  process  of  experience  that  has  brought  us  to  our 
present  standpoint  has  not  been  wholly  error  and  delusion 
and  may  on  the  whole  be  trusted." — Humanism,  Preface, 
p.  xix.  *  Ihid.,  p.  242. 

» Ibid.,  p.  64.  •  tbid.,  p.  240.  » Ibid.,  p.  222, 


358  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  excellent  reason  that  there  is  no  eternal  reality 
with  which  to  correspond. 

With  the  emergence  of  this  presupposition  into 
clear  consciousness  pragmatism  becomes  not  only 
a  method  for  testing  the  validity  of  ideas  and  a 
genetic  theory  of  truth,  but  also  a  hypothesis  with 
regard  to  the  structure  of  the  universe.  Briefly 
stated  this  hypothesis  is  that  the  universe  is  still 
in  the  process  of  making;  that  it  has  alternative 
possibilities,  and  that  its  future  is  not  assured.  It 
has  no  will  of  its  own.  Tennyson's  confession 
"  Our  wills  are  ours  to  make  them  thine  "  has  no 
longer  any  meaning.  As  we  substitute  truths  in 
the  plural  for  "  Truth  with  a  big  T  and  in  the 
singular,"  so  we  must  substitute  wills  in  the  plu- 
ral for  one  eternal  and  absolute  will.  As  has 
been  already  said  pragmatism  "  postpones  dog- 
matic answer  with  regard  to  the  subject  of  re- 
ligion," because  it  is  not  yet  certainly  known 
"  which  type  of  religion  will  work  best  in  the  long 
run,"  ^  but  the  sympathies  of  pragmatists  are 
with  "  the  view  that  the  universe  is  ultimately  a 
joint-stock  affair."  ^  "  The  only  obvious  escape 
from  paradox,"  writes  Professor  James,  "  is  to  cut 
loose  from  the  monistic  assumption  altogether  and 
to  allow  the  world  to  have  existed  from  its  origin 
in  pluralistic  form  as  an  aggregate  or  collection 

•  Pragmatism,  p.  300. 

'  Humanism,  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  M.A.,  Preface,  p.  xx. 


THREE  WORLP  VIEWS  359 

of  higher  and  lower  things  and  principles  rather 
than  an  absolutely  unitary  fact."  ^ 

The  salvation  of  this  adventurous  universe  is 
uncertain.  It  has,  however,  "  a  fighting  chance  " 
of  safety.-  The  condition  of  its  safety  is  that 
"  each  several  agent  does  its  own  '  level  best.'  .  .  . 
It  is  a  social  scheme  of  cooperative  work  genu- 
inely to  be  done."  ^  Pessimism  holds  that  the  sal- 
vation of  the  world  is  impossible.  Optimism  de- 
clares it  inevitable.  Pragmatism  rejects  both  op- 
timism and  pessimism  in  favor  of  meliorism  or 
the  doctrine  that  salvation  is  possible,  but  not  as- 
sured.* 

As  salvation  is  possible  but  not  certain  so  (in 
the  opinion  of  Professor  James)  it  is  partial." 
He  gives  up  "  the  claim  of  total  reconciliation."  ® 
I  can  believe,  he  writes,  "  in  the  ideal  as  an  ulti- 
mate, not  as  an  origin,  and  as  an  extract  not  the 
whole.  When  the  cup  is  poured  off,  the  dregs  are 
left  behind  forever,  but  the  possibility  of  what  is 
poured  off  is  sweet  enough  to  accept."  ^  "  The 
way  of  escape  from  evil,"  according  to  his  doc- 
trine, "  is  hy  dropping  it  out  altogether,  throvnng 


'  The  Varieties  of  Religious  EJxperience,  p.  132. 

*  Pragmatism,  p.  292. 

» Ibid.,  p.  290.  » Ihid.,  p.  285. 

*  He  says  that  on  this  subject  he  cannot  speak  officially  as 
a  pragmatist. 

■  Pragmatism,  p.  296. 


360  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

it  overboard  and  getting  beyond  it,  helping  to 
mahe  a  universe  that  shall  forget  its  very  place 
and  name.^^  ^ 

Pragmatism  sounds  a  clarion  call.  Its  universe 
"vvitli  a  fighting  chance  stirs  the  blood  and  makes 
the  nerves  tingle.  It  restores  to  man  the  dignity 
of  freedom.  The  pragmatist  has  awakened  from 
the  nightmare  of  naturalism.  He  knows  that 
"  life  is  not  the  mere  rattling  off  of  a  chain  that 
was  forged  innumerable  ages  ago."  ^  He  believes 
that  in  "  our  voluntary  life  things  are  really  being 
decided  from  moment  to  moment " ;  he  is  con- 
vinced that  these  decisions  have  momentous  con- 
sequences and  therefore  once  again  "  life  and  his- 
tory tingle  with  tragic  zest."  ^  But  has  he  spoken 
the  solvent  word  ?  Is  his  world  of  plural  truths, 
plural  wills,  and  plural  possibilities  the  world  in 
which  we  actually  live  ?    I  think  not. 

OBIENTAL   BELIGIONS   AND    MODERN    PHILOSOPHIES 

We  have  all  heard  that  history  is  philosophy 
teaching  by  example.  It  may  be  claimed  that  it  is 
likewise  psychology  teaching  by  example.  As  we 
study  it  we  learn  how  the  human  mind  develops. 
One  of  its  surest  revelations  is  that  this  develop- 

>  Pragmatism,  p.  297.     Author's  italics. 

*  Briefer  Psychology,  William  James,  p.  238, 

a  im.,  pp.  237,  238, 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  361 

ment  is  vortical  in  form  and  that  thought  is  per- 
petually tracing,  ascending,  and  widening  circles, 
which  correspond  with  the  lower  and  smaller  cir- 
cles of  earlier  periods. 

It  has  been  recognized  by  many  thoughtful  stu- 
dents of  contemporary  science  that  its  solution  of 
the  universe  as  the  ephemeral  manifestation  of  a 
single,  persistent,  and  unknowable  force  is  closely 
akin  to  the  religious  doctrines  of  farther  Asia. 
This  kinship  is  more  clearly  defined  in  the  state- 
ment that  conclusions  reached  by  Asia  through 
the  intuitions  of  feeling  and  imagination  are  re- 
affirmed by  science  upon  the  plane  of  the  conscious 
understanding.  A  single  passage  from  the  Bhaga- 
vad  Gita  or  Sacred  Lay  will  suggest  the  character- 
istic tenets  of  the  great  Oriental  Creed: 

The  high-minded,  inclining  to  the  nature  of  the 
gods,  worship  me  with  their  hearts  turned  to  no  other 
object,  knowing  me  to  be  the  imperishable  principle 
of  all  things.  There  exists  no  other  thing  superior 
to  me.  On  me  is  all  the  universe  suspended  as  i)earl3 
on  a  string.  I  am  the  savor  in  the  waters,  and  the 
luminous  principle  in  the  moon  and  sun,  the  mystic 
syllable,  Om  in  all  the  Vedas,  the  sound  in  the  ether, 
the  masculine  essence  in  man,  the  sweet  smell  in  the 
earth,  and  I  am  the  brightness  in  the  flame,  the  vital- 
ity in  all  beings,  and  the  power  of  mortification  in 
ascetics.  ...  I  am  the  eternal  seed  of  all  things  that 
exist.  I  am  the  intellect  of  those  beings  which  pos- 
sess intellect,  the  strength  of  the  strong.  ...  I  am 


362  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

the  lust  in  all  beings  which  is  prevented  by  no  law. 
And  know  that  all  dispositions  whether  good,  bad,  or 
indifferent  proceed  also  from  me/ 

It  is  impossible  to  mistake  the  sense  of  this  pas- 
sage. Brahma  is  the  characteristic  quality  in  each 
thing.  He  has  no  distinctive  quality  of  his  own. 
In  him  are  obliterated  not  only  all  physical,  but 
all  moral  distinctions.  He  is  ascetic  mortification, 
and  he  is  lust.  All  dispositions  whether  good,  bad, 
or  indifferent  proceed  from  him.  As  we  learn 
from  another  passage  of  the  same  lay,  "  He  is  the 
same  to  all  beings  and  has  neither  foes  nor 
friends."  "  Even  if  one  who  has  led  a  very  bad 
life  worships  me,"  says  Brahma  (or  Vishnu),  "  he 
must  be  considered  a  good  man  for  he  has  judged 
aright." 

It  is  characteristic  of  this  ancient  faith  that  it 
seeks  deliverance  not  through  moral  action  but 
through  the  extinction  of  thought.  The  devotee 
we  are  told  practises  devotion  in  the  following 
way :  "  Holding  his  body,  head,  and  neck  all  even 
and  immovable,  firmly  seated  regarding  only  the 
tip  of  his  nose  and  not  looking  around  in  different 
directions,  the  devotee  should  remain  quiet  with 
passionless  soul.  Thus  he  attains  the  supreme 
extinction  and  is  conjoined  with  Brahma."  ^ 

>  Bhagavad  Glta,  p.  52.  Translated  by  J.  Cockburn 
Thomson.  (Italics  mine.)  Vishnu  speaks  in  this  quotation 
as  Supreme  Being  identical  with  Brahma.       *  Ibid.,  p.  45. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  363 

The  three  characteristic  tenets  of  the  great  ori- 
ental creed  are  one  unity;  indifference  to  moral 
distinctions ;  and  the  goal  of  extinction.  The  re- 
vival of  these  three  tenets  in  the  creed  of  natural- 
ism is  too  patent  to  require  illustration.  All  stu- 
dents of  the  scientific  thought  so  popular  within 
the  past  fifty  years  are  familiar  with  Herbert 
Spencer's  many  formulations  of  the  doctrine  of  a 
single  persistent  force  as  the  final  cause  and  ex- 
planation of  the  world.  "  The  one  fact,"  he  tells 
us,  "  which  underlies  all  experience  as  its  neces- 
sary presupposition  is  a  single  great  force."  This 
force  is  unknowable.  It  is  in  all  things,  but  re- 
vealed by  none :  It  "  wells  up  in  man  under  the 
form  of  consciousness,"  but  this  form  is  as  ephem- 
eral as  any  of  its  other  forms.  Like  old  Proteus  . 
it  takes  on  all  shapes  but  abides  in  none.  Hu- 
manity is  only  one  of  its  vanishing  embodiments. 
Therefore  conscious  individuality  is  an  accident. 
Free  will  is  an  absurd  illusion.  Every  human 
action  was  predetermined  before  our  solar  system 
was  born.  All  life  is  misery  and  the  one  hope  of 
man  is  extinction  of  the  will  to  live.  The  ablest 
statement  of  this  naturalistic  creed  is  that  of 
which  Goethe  makes  Mephistopheles  the  exponent. 

Believe  me  who  for  many  a  thousand  year 
The  same  tough  meat  have  chewed  and  tested. 
That  from  the  cradle  to  the  bier 
No  man  the  ancient  leaven  has  digested. 


364  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

Trust  one  of  us,  this  whole  supernal 
Is  made  but  for  a  God's  delight! 
He  dwells  in  splendor  single  and  eternal, 
But  us,  he  thrusts  in  darkness  out  of  sight, 
And  you  he  dowers  with  day  and  night. 

It  has  been  necessary  to  renew  our  appreciation 
of  the  old  thought  which  the  world  has  so  recently 
revived  and  outgrown  in  order  to  understand  the 
great  change  which  is  even  now  going  on  imme- 
diately around  us.  For,  precisely  as  naturalism 
revived  the  intuitions  of  Brahmanism  and  Bud- 
dhism upon  the  plane  of  the  understanding,  so  con- 
temporary pragmatism  is  reaffirming  the  charac- 
teristic tenets  of  the  religion  variously  known  as 
Dualism,  Mazdaism,  or  Zoroastrianism. 

The  most  characteristic  fact  about  this  ancient 
religion  is  its  renunciation  of  unity  and  its  setting 
up  of  distinction.  This  distinction  seized  origi- 
nally as  an  antithesis  of  light  and  darkness  de- 
velops gradually  into  an  antithesis  of  good  and 
evil.  Two  rival  powers,  Ahura  Mazda  and  Angra 
Mainyu,  are  at  work  in  the  world,  and  each  man 
must  choose  with  which  one  of  them  he  will  con- 
spire. A  few  passages  from  the  Zend-Avesta  will 
show  how  the  world  is  parceled  out  between  them : 

The  first  of  the  good  lands  and  countries  which  I, 
Ahura  Mazda,  created,  was  the  Airyana  Vaego  by  the 
good   river  Daitya. 

Thereupon  came  Angra  Mainyu,  who  is  all  death. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  365 

and  he  counter-created  by  his  witchcraft  the  serpent 
in  the  river,  and  winter  a  work  of  the  Daevas, 

The  second  of  the  good  lands  and  countries  which 
I,  Ahura  Mazda,  created,  was  the  plains  in  Sughdha. 

Thereupon  came  Angra  Mainyu,  who  is  all  death, 
and  he  counter-created  by  his  witchcraft  the  fly 
Skaitya,  which  brings  death  to  the  cattle. 

The  third  of  the  good  lands  which  I,  Ahura  Mazda, 
created,  was  the  strong  holy  Mouru. 

Thereupon  came  Angra  Mainyu,  who  is  all  death, 
and  counter-created  by  his  witchcraft  sinful  lusts/ 

So  the  enumeration  proceeds  through  many 
creations  of  Ahura  Mazda  and  counter-creations 
of  Angra  Mainyu.  Ahura  makes  a  beautiful  land 
which  Angra  curses  with  "  stained  mosquitoes." 
Another  good  land  is  brought  forth  and  followed 
by  counter-creation  of  the  sin  of  pride.  A  num- 
ber of  good  lands  are  created  and  instantly  suc- 
ceeded by  counter-creations  of  excessive  heat, 
witchcraft,  unbelief,  and  different  dreaded  ill- 
nesses. 

No  alert  mind  can  ponder  these  creations  and 
counter-creations  without  becoming  aware  of  two 
facts.  The  human  mind  had  become  aroused  to 
distinctions  in  both  the  material  and  spiritual 
worlds.  By  some  of  these  distinctions  it  was  at- 
tracted, by  others  it  was  repelled.  The  men  who 
created  the  Zend  religion  did  not  like  winter,  flies, 

»  Sacred  Books  of  the  East,  vol.  iv,  pp.  4-6. 


366  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

stained  mosquitoes,  witchcraft,  pride,  lust,  unbe- 
lief, or  oppression  by  foreign  rulers.  So  they 
lumped  all  these  undesirable  things  together  and 
branded  them  as  creations  of  Angra  Mainyu  who 
was  all  death. 

The  consciousness  out  of  which  the  Zend-Avesta 
sprang  has  its  crudest  analogue  in  such  questions 
as  "  Why  did  God  make  flies  and  mosquitoes  ? " 
A  more  dignified  example  of  this  mental  attitude 
is  given  in  the  following  poem  of  William  Blake : 

Tiger,  tiger,  burning  bright 

In  the  forests  of  the  night. 

What  immortal  hand  or  eye 

Could  frame  thy  fearful  symmetry? 

*  *  *  *  # 

,        In  what  distant  deeps  or  skies 
Bums  the  fire  of  thine  eyes. 
On  what  wings  dare  he  aspire? 
What  the  hand  dare  seize  the  fire? 
***** 

What  the  hammer?    What  the  chain? 
In  what  furnace  was  thy  brain? 
What  the  anvil?     What  dread  grasp 
Dare  its  deadly  terrors  clasp? 

♦  *  *  *  * 
When  the  stars  threw  down  their  spears 
And  watered  heaven  with  their  tears 
Did  He  smile  His  work  to  see? 

Did  He  who  made  the  lamh  make  thee? 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  367 

Tiger,  tiger,  burning  bright 
In  the  forests  of  the  night. 
What  immortal  hand  or  eye 
Dare  frame  thy  fearful  symmetry? 

As  I  have  said  this  poem  suggests  the  state  of 
mind  out  of  which  sprang  the  religion  of  the  Zend- 
Avesta.  Men  had  become  so  keenly  aware  of  the 
dark  side  of  life  that  they  could  no  longer  believe 
in  a  single  power  as  the  source  of  all  things.  This 
dark  side  of  life  includes  the  baffling  phenomena 
of  nature,  the  problems  of  pain  and  sin  in  their 
relation  to  the  individual,  and  the  many  seeming 
tragedies  of  human  history.  The  creators  of  the 
Zend  religion  faced  the  darkness  of  life  with 
quickened  intelligence  and  quickened  courage,  and 
out  of  dauntless  hearts  answered  the  challenge  of 
evil  with  the  assertion  that  they  would  fight  it. 
This  is  their  great  deed.  They  will  not  sit  down, 
look  at  the  end  of  their  noses  and  say  Om.  They 
will  not  seek  peace  in  extinction.  Granted  that 
Ahura  Mazda  is  not  all  powerful.  He  is,  never- 
theless, locked  in  deadly  combat  with  Angra 
Mainyu.  They  incline  to  the  belief  that  he  will 
be  victorious.  But  whether  victory  or  defeat 
await  him,  they  will  help  him  in  his  fight. 

Like  its  religious  prototype  pragmatism  has 
arisen  out  of  an  honest  and  resolute  grapple  with 
the  enigma  of  evil.     The  revelations  of  science 

shroud  this  enigma  in  deeper  mystery.     The  phi- 
26 


368  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

losophy  of  naturalism  conspicuously  fails  to  ex- 
plain it.  Idealism  seems  to  make  the  absolute 
responsible  for  it  and  such  a  solution  repels  the 
moral  consciousness.  Better  no  Creator  than  an 
immoral  Creator.  Better  a  plural  and  insecure 
universe  with  a  "  fighting  chance  "  for  getting  rid 
of  evil  than  a  universe  wherein  the  existence  of 
evil  is  permitted  because  "  it  enriches  the  life  of 
the  absolute  first  principle." 

The  deliverances  of  both  Professor  James  and 
Professor  Schiller  make  evident  the  fact  that  they 
understand  this  immoral  doctrine  of  evil  to  be 
characteristic  of  the  philosophy  of  absolute  ideal- 
ism. "  Under  the  auspices  of  the  Hegelizing 
idealists,"  writes  Professor  Schiller,  "  Philosophy 
has  uplifted  herself  once  more  to  a  metaphysical 
contemplation  of  the  absolute,  of  the  unique 
whole  in  which  all  things  are  included  and  trans- 
cended. Now,  whether  this  conception  has  any 
value  for  metaphysics  is  a  moot  point  on  which 
I  have  elsewhere  expressed  a  decided  opinion ;  but 
there  can  hardly  he  a  pretense  of  denying  that  it 
is  the  death  of  morals.  For  the  ideal  of  the  abso- 
lute whole  cannot  be  rendered  compatible  with 
the  antithetical  valuations  which  form  the  vital 
atmosphere  of  human  agents.  They  are  partial 
appreciations  which  vanish  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  whole.  Without  the  distinctions  of  good 
and  evil,    right  and   wrong,   pleasure  and   pain, 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  369 

self  and  other,  then  and  now,  progress  and  decay, 
human  life  would  be  dissolved  into  the  phantom 
play  of  an  unmeaning  mirage.  But  in  the  ab- 
solute all  moral  distinctions  must,  like  all  others, 
be  swallowed  up  and  disappear.^  In  even  more 
emphatic  protest  Professor  James  writes  as  fol- 
lows : 

It  is  perfectly  safe  to  say  now  that  if  the  Hegelian 
gnosticism  which  has  begun  to  show  itself  here  and 
in  Great  Britain  were  to  become  a  popular  philosophy, 
as  it  once  was  in  Germany,  it  would  certainly  develop 
its  left  wing  here  as  there  and  produce  a  reaction  of 
disgust.  Already  I  have  heard  a  graduate  of  this  very 
school  express  in  the  pulpit  his  willingness  to  sin  like 
David,  if  only  he  might  repent  like  David.  You  may 
tell  me  he  was  only  sowing  his  wild,  or  rather  his 
tame  oats,  and  perhaps  he  was.  But  the  point  is  that 
in  the  subjectivistic  or  gnostical  philosophy  oat-sow- 
ing, wild  or  tame,  becomes  a  systematic  necessity  and 
the  chief  function  of  life.  After  the  pure  and  classic 
truths,  the  exciting  and  rancid  ones  must  be  expe- 
rienced; and  if  the  stupid  virtues  of  the  philistine 
herd  do  not  then  come  in  and  save  society  from  the 
influence  of  the  children  of  light,  a  sort  of  inward 
putrefaction  becomes  its  inevitable  doom. 

Evidently  both  the  authors  quoted  sincerely 
believe  that  the  absolute  of  Hegelian  idealism  is 

'  Humanism,  F.  C  S.  Schiller,  M.A.,  pp.  2  and  3.  (Italics 
mine  and  the  capitals  of  the  original  mostly  changed  to 
"  lower  case  "  letters.) 

2  The  Will  to  Believe,  by  William  James,  pp.  171,  172. 


370  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

a  kind  of  Brahma  in  whom  all  distinctions  even 
those  of  good  and  evil  are  transcended,  and  they 
rightly  prefer  Ahura  Mazda  and  his  age-long  con- 
flict with  Angra  Mainyu.  '  Their  interpretation 
of  absolute  idealism  seems  strange  to  one  who,  like 
myself,  has  learned  from  its  study  that  "  the  whole 
search  of  philosophy  is  for  a  distinction  that  will 
hold,"  ^  and  who  seems  to  herself  to  have  found 
that  abiding  distinction  in  an  eternal  personal- 
ity. I  have  attempted  to  state  as  briefly  as  pos- 
sible the  tenets  of  naturalism  and  pragmatism. 
I  shall  now  endeavor  to  present  with  equal  brev- 
ity the  insights  of  absolute  idealism  as  I  under- 
stand them. 

THE    PHILOSOPHY    OF    ABSOLUTE    IDEALISM 

The  fundamental  presupposition  of  this  phi- 
losophy is  that  the  final  explanation  of  the  uni- 
verse must  be  sought  in  a  completely  realized 
selfrconsciousness.  It  seems  to  me  a  significant 
fact  that  underlying  every  practical  issue  dis- 
cussed in  this  book  has  been  some  theory  of 
self-consciousness  which  attacked  either  its  pri- 
ority, its  value,  or  its  actual  existence.  It  will  be 
remembered  that  Herbart  defined  the  Ego  as  "  a 
result  of  presentations  which  unite  and  interpene- 
trate one  another."    For  Herbart,  therefore,  "  the 

«  Dr.  Harris. 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  371 

self  is  a  composite,"  and  "  consciousness  not  the 
condition,  but  rather  the  resultant  of  ideas  which 
are  primarily  forces."  ^  By  the  leader  of  that 
child-study  movement  whose  educational  outcome 
was  the  free-play  programme,  consciousness  was 
hypothetically  conceived  as  "  a  wart  raised  by  the 
sting  of  sin,"  "  a  product  of  alienation,"  or  "a 
remedial  process."  The  greatest  interpreter  of 
pragmatism  is  persuaded  "  that  breath  moving 
outward  between  the  glottis  and  the  nostrils  "  is 
"  the  essence  out  of  which  philosophers  have  con- 
structed the  entity  known  as  consciousness.  That 
entity,"  he  adds,  "  is  fictitious  while  thoughts  in 
the  concrete  are  fully  real."  ^ 

Denying  the  fundamental  postulate  of  idealism 
the  philosophies  referred  to  are  naturally  hostile 
to  a  method  of  education  which  is  intrinsically  re- 
lated to  the  idealistic  view  of  the  world.  In  this 
intellectual  hostility  lies  the  final  explanation  of 
the  several  attempts  made  to  revolutionize  the 
kindergarten.  Conversely  the  final  justification  of 
the  traditional  kindergarten  is  impossible  unless 
the  idealistic  philosophy  be  the  most  adequate  state- 
ment of  truth  thus  far  achieved  by  human  reason. 

•The  Educational  Theories  of  Herbart  and  Froebel,  by 
John  Angus  MacVannel,  p.  69. 

2  Does  Consciousness  Exist?  Prof.  William  James,  Journal 
of  Philosophy,  Psychology,  and  Scientific  Methods,  Septem- 
ber, 1904,  p.  491. 


372  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

it  must  be  granted  that  many  interpreters  of 
idealism  have  aided  to  bring  their  fundamental 
postulate  into  disrepute  by  assuming  that  the  per- 
fect self-consciousness  "  includes  all  individual 
selves."  As  has  recently  been  pointed  out  by  a 
thoughtful  writer  such  inclusion  of  individual 
selves  in  a  common  consciousness  "  is  one  instance 
of  that  fertile  source  of  philosophical  error — the 
misapplication  of  spatial  metaphors."  "  Minds 
are  not  Chinese  boxes  which  can  be  put  inside  one 
another."  ^  ..."  To  talk  of  one  self-conscious 
being  therefore  as  including  or  containing  in  him- 
self or  being  identical  with  other  selves  is  to  use 
language  which  is  wholly  meaningless  and  self- 
contradictory,  for  the  essence  of  being  a  self  is 
to  distinguish  one's  self  from  other  selves."  ^  In 
my  judgment  it  is  in  virtue  of  the  fact  that  so 
many  idealists  have  been  betrayed  by  this  "  spa- 
tial metaphor "  that  their  explanations  justify 
the  strictures  of  Professor  James  and  Professor 
Schiller. 

"  Mind  is  communicable  but  not  divisible."  It 
cannot  be  described  as  having  "  parts  "  or  being 
made  up  of  "  elements."  The  human  soul  is  not 
a  "  part*"  of  God.  It  is  not  an  "  element "  in 
God.  It  is  not  an  "  aspect "  of  God.  It  is  not  a 
"  fragment "  of  the  self -consciousness  of  the  Ab- 

>  H.  Rashdall,  Personal  Idealism,  p.  388. 
» Ibid.,  p.  388. 


THREE   WORLD   VIEWS  373 

solute.  What  then  is  it  and  how  is  it  related  to 
its  creative  source  ?  The  answer  to  this  question 
which  I  accept  is  that  each  human  soul  is  a  du- 
plicate of  the  self-determining  form  of  the  divine 
self -consciousness. 

The  distinctive  characteristic  of  self-conscious- 
ness is  subject-objectivity.  The  self  makes  itself 
its  own  object.  In  this  act  of  self-objectification 
intellect  and  will  are  conjoined.  The  self  objecti- 
fies itself.  This  is  an  act  of  will.  It  recognizes 
itself  in  its  object.  This  is  an  act  of  intellect. 
The  self-objectification  and  self-recognition  are 
not  two  acts  but  one  act  having  two  phases  or 
aspects. 

When  we  attempt  to  explain  to  ourselves  this 
self -objectifying  act,  we  realize  that  it  involves 
not  only  the  objectification  of  determinations  but 
the  objectification  of  self -determining  energy.  If 
the  thoughts  of  God  are  deeds,  then  nature  is  the 
drama  of  those  deeds,  and  with  the  arrival  of 
nature  at  living  beings  the  process  of  self-object- 
ification reaches  that  dramatic  moment  when  it 
objectifies  its  own  free  self-making  energy. 
Thenceforward,  free  energies  must  make  them- 
selves.^ 

Without  pausing  to  consider  the  bearing  of  this 
insight  upon  the  nature  of  living,  but  non-human 

'  The  attentive  reader  will  soon  realize  that  I  am  stating  a 
theory  of  creation  which  must  be  amended. 


374  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

beings  let  us  ask  what  it  means  as  related  to  the 
nature  and  destiny  of  man  and  what  light  it  casts 
upon  the  character  of  God. 

The  first  insight  which  suggests  itself  is  that 
the  ohjectification  of  the  divine  self-determining 
creates  noumenal  and  not  merely  phenomenal 
being.  If  God  gave  men  only  a  seeming  power  of 
self-determination  He  would  not  really  objectify 
Himself;  therefore  He  could  not  know  Himself, 
and  lacking  self-knowledge  would  not  be  the  ab- 
solute self-consciousness  which  is  the  final  postu- 
late of  idealism.  In  other  words,  unless  man  is 
really  self-determining  and  therefore  free  and 
responsible  God  cannot  be  Eternal  Personality. 
The  freedom  and  moral  responsibility  of  each 
individual  soul  are  therefore  guaranteed  by  the 
realized  self-consciousness  of  the  divine  first  prin- 
ciple. 

As  the  final  postulate  of  idealism  guarantees 
the  freedom  of  man,  so  it  establishes  the  goodness 
of  God  and  supplies  an  absolute  criterion  for  mo- 
rality. The  condition  of  an  absolute  self-con- 
sciousness is  that  it  shall  make  itself  objective.  It 
cannot  do  this  without  conferring  its  own  freedom 
and  independence  upon  its  object.  It  gives,  there- 
fore, of  its  best.  It  gives  itself.  Giving  itself  it 
reveals  itself  as  love.  For  what  is  love  if  not  the 
giving  of  itself  to  the  object  loved  ?  A  self -objec- 
tifying first  principle  is  therefore  an  altruistic 


THREE   WORLD   VIEWS  375 

first  principle.  "  '  God  creates  because  He  has  no 
envy.'  The  fundamental  principle  of  morality  is 
goodness  in  the  sense  of  grace  or  loving  kindness. 
Its  nearest  illustration  is  mother-love,  which  en- 
dures the  caprices  and  misdeeds  of  infancy  and 
saves  it  from  destruction  through  much  pain  and 
trouble.  Goodness  presupposes  the  giving  of  real 
being  to  the  creature ;  not  a  phenomenal  being  but 
a  noumenal  being,  and  such  noumenal  being  is 
self-activity,  freedom,  independence,  responsibil- 
ity, both  intellect  and  will."  * 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  only  one  aspect 
of  self-objectifying  activity.  The  consideration 
of  this  aspect  seems  to  have  yielded  an  altruistic 
God  and  a  free  man.^  We  must  now  consider  its 
second  aspect.  Having  objectified  himself  God 
recognizes  Himself  in  His  object.  Can  He  so  rec- 
ognize Himself  in  nature  and  in  man?  Can  the 
perfect  recognize  himself  in  the  imperfect?  Can 
the  Infinite  and  Absolute  Being  recognize  Himself 
in  finite  and  developing  beings  ?  If  not,  may  we 
have  been  mistaken  in  our  identification  of  the 
act  of  divine  self-objectification  with  the  process 
of  nature  and  its  culmination  in  man  ? 

Pondering  more  closely  our  fundamental  pre- 
supposition that  a  perfect  self-consciousness  ob- 
jectifies and  recognizes  itself  we  become   aware 

«  Hegel's  Voyage  of  Discovery,  by  W.  T.  Harris. 

2  Here  begins  the  amendment  of  my  original  statement. 


376  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

that  its  object  cannot  be  less  perfect  than  itself. 
To  admit  a  process  of  evolution  as  the  object  of 
the  divine  self-consciousness  is  to  define  a  finite 
God  who  passes  through  stages  of  imperfect  doing 
and  knowing.  To  accept  a  finite  God  is  to  con- 
ceive a  God  who  had  a  temporal  beginning.  The 
contrast  between  time  and  eternity  is  not  quanti- 
tative but  qualitative.  The  eternal  must  have 
realized  all  its  potentialities — the  temporal  is 
always  in  process  of  realization.  All  temporal 
processes  presuppose  an  eternally  realized  energy 
as  their  source.  A  temporal  God  is  neither  self- 
explanatory  nor  explanatory  of  the  universe.  The 
logical  results  of  conceiving  God  as  finite  and  tem- 
poral are  atheism  and  acosmism. 

If,  therefore,  we  accept  the  fundamental  pos- 
tulate of  idealism  that  the  final  explanation  of 
the  universe  is  a  completely  realized  self-conscious- 
ness, we  are  impelled  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
self-realization  has  been  complete  from  eternity. 
The  object  of  such  a  consciousness  cannot  be  a 
process  of  becoming.  It  must  be  another  con- 
sciousness in  every  respect  equal  to  the  first,  but 
differing  from  it  in  the  fact  that  it  has  been  eter- 
nally generated  by  the  self -objectifying  act}  The 
fact  that  all  idealists  have  not  reached  this  con- 
clusion does  not  militate  against  its  logical  neces- 
sity. It  merely  suggests  that  the  implications  of 
'  Amendment. 


THREE  WORLD   VIEWS  377 

the  idealistic  pre-siipposition  have  not  been  ade- 
quately apprehended. 

The  results  of  this,  inadequate  apprehension 
have  been  the  philosophies  of  monism  and  plural- 
ism. Monism  has  tried  to  explain  nature  and 
human  history  as  the  process  of  the  divine  self- 
knowing.  The  result  has  been  that  it  merged 
human  individuality  in  the  divine  and  thereby 
lost  human  freedom,  responsibility,  and  immor- 
tality. Pluralism  has  insisted  upon  the  separate- 
ness  and  independence  of  each  individual  self- 
consciousness.  To  justify  its  insight  it  has  been 
driven  either  to  make  "  Reality  consist  of  eternal 
souls  without  God,"  ^  or  to  accept  a  God  who  is 
not  a  creator  but  merely  one  member  (though  the 
greatest  member)  of  a  society  of  interconnected 
souls.  The  philosophy  of  pluralism  is  confronted 
•with  two  enigmas.  How  can  eternal  souls  be  in 
a  process  of  becoming  ?  How  can  the  universe  be 
whole  and  one  if  there  is  no  absolute  mind  which 
wills  and  knows  its  wholeness  ?  Pluralism  makes 
an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  answer  the  former 
enigma  by  distinguishing  between  souls  as  "  eter- 
nal realities  "  and  the  same  souls  as  appearing  in 
time.  It  seeks  to  get  rid  of  the  latter  enigma  by 
substituting  a  possible  empirical  unification  of 
things  for  their  rational  unity.- 

'  Personal  Idealism,  p.  393. 
2  Pragmatism,  p.  280. 


378  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

The  division  of  idealists  into  the  rival  camps 
of  monists  and  pluralists  suggests  the  possibility 
of  a  synthesis  which  would  give  validity  to  the 
truths  for  which  they  respectively  contend.  It 
may  be  that  the  conception  of  an  eternal  self-con- 
sciousness objectifying  and  recognizing  itself  in  a 
second  self-consciousness  which  is  in  every  respect 
its  equal  but  differs  from  it  in  the  fact  that  it  was 
generated  through  this  objectifying  act,  offers  the 
point  of  departure  for  the  synthesis  required. 
Let  us  endeavor  to  approach  this  synthesis  by  ask- 
ing ourselves  wherein  the  second  self-consciousness 
above  described  will  differ  from  the  first,  and 
since  self-consciousness  and  personality  are  syn- 
onymous terms  let  us  now  drop  the  expression  first 
and  second  self-consciousness,  in  favor  of  the  ex- 
pression first  and  second  person.  Between  the 
first  and  second  persons  (as  between  all  true  per- 
sons) there  is  both  identity  and  difference.  They 
are  alike  in  that  both  are  eternally  realized  self- 
objectifying  minds.  They  differ  in  the  fact  that 
the  self-objectifying  consciousness  of  the  first  is 
that  of  an  aboriginal  generator,  while  the  self- 
objectifying  consciousness  of  the  second  is  that  of 
a  generator  who  has  been  himself  eternally  gen- 
erated. He  is  possessed  of  the  same  perfection  as 
the  eternal  generator  and  since  to  know,  is  to  cause 
to  he,  his  knowledge  of  his  perfect  personality  is 
objectified  as  a  third  perfect  person.     He  knows 


THREE  WORLD   VIEWS  379 

himself,  however,  not  only  as  eternally  perfect  but 
as  eternally  generated,  and  this  knowledge  makes 
objective  his  ovm  derivation  as  a  process  ascend- 
ing from  nothingness  toward  identification  with 
the  first  perfect  person.  This  objectified  process 
is  the  evolutionary  ascent  of  nature  and  man. 
It  is  "  a  becoming  from  that  which  is  not  to  that 
which  is  and  is  perfect."  ^  Hence  on  the  one  hand 
it  contains  eternally  all  degrees  of  imperfection 
and  on  the  other  it  is  a  process  wherein  imperfec- 
tion is  forever  being  eliminated. 

The  most  diflScult  act  of  thought  in  its  attempt 
to  explore  the  implications  of  a  completely  real- 
ized self-consciousness  is  to  understand  how  the 
self -objectifying  act  closes  with  the  eternal  pro- 
cession and  its  culmination  in  a  third  perfect 
person.  The  question  arises,  "  Must  not  this 
third  person  also  objectify  himself  and  thus 
cause  a  fourth  who  in  turn  originates  a  fifth  and 
so  on  in  infinite  progression  ?  "  ^  The  answer 
to  this  question  is  that  such  an  infinite  progres- 
sion is  superfluous  because  the  third  person  does 
forever  objectify  his  eternally  complete  processio 
in  an  actual  process  of  becoming  and  his  eter- 
nally realized  personality  in  the  eternally  re- 
newed mutual  recognition  of  the  first  and  second 
persons. 

«  Hegel's  Logic,  by  W.  T.  Harris,  p.  379. 
» Ibid.,  p.  13. 


380  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

If  we  have  correctly  apprehended  the  implica- 
tions of  a  completely  realized  self -consciousness, 
they  would  seem  to  point  inexorably  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  perfect  personality  must  be  triune. 
Each  of  these  triune  persons  conspires  in  the  sin- 
gle act  of  self-objectification  through  which  their 
reciprocal  relationship  is  eternally  defined.  The 
First  Person  "  in  knowing  Himself  generates  the 
Second  from  all  eternity.  The  Second  in  knowing 
His  derivation  recognizes  His  origin  in  the  know- 
ing of  the  First.  But  the  First,  too,  recognizes  the 
recognition  of  the  Second,"  ^  and  this  mutual  rec- 
ognition is  objectified  in  a  process  of  evolution 
ascending  from  utter  nothingness  to  perfect  per- 
sonality. The  evolutionary  process  must  be  care- 
fully distinguished  from  the  Third  Perfect  Per- 
son, in  whom  on  the  one  hand  it  has  eternally 
completed  itself  and  through  whose  conspiring 
activity  it  is  on  the  other  hand  forever  renewed. 
"  This  evolutionary  process,"  says  Dr.  Harris, 
"  has  unique  relations  to  each  of  the  Divine  Per- 
sons. To  the  First  it  is  the  recognition  of  His 
own  process  of  generating  through  goodness  or 
altruistic  action;  to  the  Second  it  is  the  recogni- 
tion of  another's  goodness  and  altruism — namely, 
that  of  the  First;  to  the  Third  it  is  a  recognition 


'  Hegel's  Logic,  p.  379.     This  is  the  final  amendment  of  my 
original  statement. 


THREE  WORLD   VIEWS  381 

of  His  own  double  procession  through  the  altru- 
ism of  the  First  and  Second."  ^ 

Our  analysis  of  the  implications  of  a  com- 
pletely realized  self-consciousness  has  led  to  con- 
clusions in  substantial  agreement  with  the  theol- 
ogy of  the  Christian  Church.  These  conclusions, 
however,  are  not  offered  as  dogmas  to  be  accepted 
upon  authority,  but  as  insights  to  be  actively 
reproduced  by  the  individual  thinker.  Moreover, 
they  add  to  Christian  theology  a  more  precise 
conception  of  the  Holy  Spirit  and  of  His  relation- 
ship to  the  process  of  creation,  to  the  individual 
human  soul,  and  to  the  church  universal. 

In  order  that  we  may  actively  assimilate  these 
more  precise  conceptions,  we  must  make  a  clear 
distinction  between  the  Holy  Spirit  and  that  con- 
tinuous creation  of  worlds  in  time  and  space 
which  is  His  eternally  renewed  procession.  This 
procession  in  turn  must  be  conceived  as  an  eternal 
return  of  the  imperfect  toward  the  perfect.  It 
involves  an  ascent  of  being  from  chaos  through 
matter,  motion,  star  dust,  revolving  spheres,  or- 
ganic life  and  human  institutions,  to  the  perfect 
institution  or  cosmic  community  which  (like  the 
human  institutions  wherein  it  is  imperfectly  mir- 
rored) "  collects  power  from  each  of  the  members 
and  endows  each  with  the  power  of  all."  ^     This 

•  Hegel's  Logic,  W.  T.  Harris,  pp.  379,  380. 
>  lUd.,  p.  14. 


382  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

cosmic  community  has  existed  from  all  eternity, 
and  since  it  is  necessarily  postulated  through  the 
implications  of  a  realized  self-consciousness,  it 
harmonizes  the  eternal  society  upon  which  plural- 
ism insists  with  the  noetic  unity  for  which  monism 
contends. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  conclusions  to 
which  we  have  been  impelled  had  their  point  of 
departure  in  the  contradiction  which  arose  from 
our  attempt  to  explain  man  as  the  objectified 
thought  of  a  monistic  God.  This  contradiction 
inheres  in  most  interpretations  of  idealism,  and, 
as  Dr.  Harris  has  pointed  out,  its  source  is  Hegel's 
identification  of  creation  with  the  Logos  or  Second 
Divine  Person.^     Through  this  identification  fini- 

*"I  have  often  before  alluded  to  this  distinction  of  the 
Processio  from  the  Second  Divine  Person  as  the  imp>ortant 
thing  neglected  by  Hegel,  a  neglect  that  in  some  measure 
justifies  the  censure  of  pantheism  that  has  been  so  freely  cast 
upon  him.  It  is  not,  however,  with  Hegel  precisely  as  the 
charge  has  made  it  to  be.  Hegel  does  not  in  any  wise  fail  in 
the  proper  characterization  of  the  Third  Person,  nor  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  invisible  church  and  the  'Communion  of 
Saints.'  Freedom  and  immortality  in  the  most  concrete  sense 
are  held  by  Hegel.  The  defect  pertains  to  the  conception  of 
the  nature  of  the  Second  Person.  The  Processio  is  taken  for 
the  Logos.  Hence  there  is  an  implication,  that  the  First  in 
knowing  himself  perceives  in  himself  finitude  originating  and 
passing  over  into  perfection.  Recognizing  this  in  himself,  he 
at  the  same  time  creates  it;  for  his  knowing  is  creating. 
'  In  God  knowing  and  willing  are  one. '  But  such  recognition  of 
the  origin  of  finitude  in  himself  implies  a  consciousness  of  a 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  383 

tude  is  thrust  without  warrant  into  the  perfect 
consciousness  which  idealism  presupposes.  With 
this  thrust,  therefore,  idealism  slays  itself.  There- 
after, stating  its  theory  as  "  the  positive  inclu- 
sion of  all  finite  facts  in  the  unity  of  the  su- 
preme consciousness  of  the  absolute,"  it  virtually 
makes  God  the  author  of  sin  and  justifies  the 
valiant  attack  of  Professor  James  against  a  di- 
vine being  who  is  responsible  for  the  Brockton 
murderer.^ 

Do  we  escape  this  dilemma  when  we  conceive 
creation  as  arising  through  the  contemplation  by 
the  Logos  of  His  own  derivation  ?  It  seems  to  me 
that  we  do.  For  the  self-objectifying  act  through 
which  He  creates  all  living  beings  involves  recog- 
nition of  His  own  self-deiermining  energy  and 
therefore  of  their  freedom.  The  self -objectifying 
act  through  which  He  creates  man  involves  recog- 
nition not  only  of  self-determining  energy  but  of 
self-determining  energy  which  has  achieved  the 
final  form  of  self-consciousness,  and  in  which 
therefore  the  generic  ideal  can  be  realized  in  the 
individual.  Even  plants  and  animals  are  self- 
creative   energies,    and   their    many    genera    and 

derivation,  a  b^ottenness,  and  this  shows  at  once  that  Hegel 
has  conceived  the  First  as  the  Second.  He  has  attributed 
to  the  Father  the  consciousness  that  belongs  to  the  Logos. " 
—Hegel's  Logic,  W.  T.  Harris,  p.  381. 

'  See  The  Will  to  Believe,  William  James,  pp.  160,  161, 177. 
27 


384  EDUCATIONAL  ISSUES 

species  arise  through  the  varying  forms  in  which 
they  adapt  themselves  to  environment  and  modify 
environment  to  themselves.  Man  is  not  only  a 
self-creative  being  but  a  responsible  being,  because 
in  virtue  of  his  form  of  self-consciousness  he  can 
discriminate  between  his  partial,  accidental,  and 
temporary  self,  and  his  total,  essential,  and  im- 
mortal self.  According  to  our  doctrine,  therefore, 
God  is  not  the  Creator  of  sin.  He  creates  free 
beings  and  they  create  their  own  sin. 

We  have  seen  that  the  giving  of  real  freedom 
to  the  creature  implies  goodness  in  the  Creator. 
Goodness  is  altruism  or  love  which  gives  itself. 
This  real  freedom  conferred  upon  the  creature  by 
divine  altruism  can  only  be  recognized  by  holding 
him  (man)  responsible  for  his  deeds.  Such  recog- 
nition of  responsibility  involves  man's  right  to  the 
consequences  of  his  own  actions.  Being  free,  man 
is  amenable  to  justice,  whose  principle  is  the  re- 
turn of  the  deed  upon  the  doer.  To  deny  him 
this  return  is  to  mock  him  with  the  semblance  of 
freedom.  Hence,  as  Christian  intuition  has  deeply 
discerned,  hell  is  a  final  tribute  of  respect  from 
the  Creator  to  the  creature  made  in  His  own  im- 
age. As  a  tribute  to  freedom,  however,  hell  im- 
plies the  immortal  persistence  of  freedom  and 
therefore  of  the  possibility  of  amendment.  Man 
cannot  jnstly  receive  the  return  of  his  deed  imless 
he  is  responsible  for  it.    He  cannot  be  responsible 


THREE  WORLD  VIEWS  385 

unless  he  is  free  and  capable  of  amendment. 
Should  he  lose  his  freedom  even  through  his  own 
sin  he  could  no  longer  be  punished  for  sinning. 
Implicit  in  the  doctrine  of  hell  is  the  insight 
which  triumphs  over  hell.  Man  may  stay  in  hell 
forever  if  he  so  choose.*  He  may  always  es- 
cape from  hell  if  he  will.  Being  free,  he  will 
not  choose  forever  to  contradict  his  freedom. 
The  resources  of  infinite  love  will  be  taxed  to 
the  utmost  to  illuminate  his  intelligence  and 
influence  his  recalcitrant  will.  The  only  im- 
possibility is  that  he  should  cease  to  be,  for  his 
immortal  existence  is  bound  up  with  that  eter- 
nal act  in  which  divine  knowing  and  willing 
are  one. 

Perfect  justice  in  the  sense  of  a  complete  return 
of  the  deed  upon  the  doer  can  only  be  exercised 
toward  a  perfect  being.  To  exercise  it  toward  im- 
perfect beings  would  make  an  evolutionary  world- 
order  impossible.  Since  this  evolutionary  world- 
order  is  necessarily  presupposed  by  the  self-object- 
ifying act  through  which  the  Logos  makes  actual 
His  own  timeless  derivation,  goodness,  or  altruism, 
must  be  recognized  as  the  fundamental  principle 
of  the  divine  character  and  justice  be  given  valid- 
ity only  in  so  far  as  it  does  not  collide  with,  but 
on  the  contrary  furthers  the  aim  of  goodness.    Out 

»  W.  T.  Harris,  Spiritual  Sense  of  Dante's  Divina  Comme- 
dia,  second  edition,  p.  19. 


386  EDUCATIONAL   ISSUES 

of  reciprocal  relationship  between  the  goodness 
that  gives  freedom  and  the  justice  or  righteous- 
ness which  respect  for  freedom  demands  arises 
that  providential  process  through  which  "  God 
educates  the  human  soul." 


CO 


THE  END 


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